Fire and Light: Sequel to Conqueror of Shambala
by Sarif
Summary: Ten years after Ed and Al's return from Germany, World War II has ignited Europe, and Amestrian alchemy may hold the key to victory...or defeat. Rated for language, violence and eventual adult situations.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Al in a day's work.

Rain beat a pattering staccato on canvas tenting, soft and soothing—until thunder crashed directly overhead.

Alphonse Elric sat up with a start, the last wisps of his dream fading as he remembered where he was.

_That was strange. I could almost swear I've had that dream before…_ He shrugged.

Yawning, he rolled to his feet and stuck his head out of his tent, making a face as cold rain immediately soaked his scalp and neck. Outside the lights of the camp pierced the night, reflecting across the rain-slick ground. Uniformed men and women hurried back and forth, shielding themselves from the elements with oilcloth, coats or sheets of canvas.

_Gah, it would have to get all muddy right before a scouting run,_ Al thought irritably. Being in the south for its short but intense rainy season was starting to wear on him. The mud never bothered him so much as the rain. Rain made him think of home, and of cozy days spent watching its gray progress across the hills. And the more he thought of home the more he longed to be there.

He pulled his head back in and sat back down on the regulation cot, reciting his mantra as he stuffed his stocking feet into his boots. _One more day until I can go home. One more day until I can go home. One more day...God, I can't wait. _

"Lieutenant Colonel Elric?" someone was calling outside Al's tent, his voice pitched over the rain. "Lieutenant Colonel?"

Alphonse hopped on his one shod foot to the tent flap and yanked it open. "Get in here, Hakuro. It's too miserable to stand around out there."

Corporal Thomen Hakuro smiled gratefully and darted inside. "Thank you, sir. I've mail for you."

Al clapped his hands and touched his lone camp table. An array that emitted heat and light emerged on its surface, bathing the drab canvas in a warm glow. He smiled at it, mentally thanking Roy for showing him this trick. "Here, dry out over that for a minute."

"Thank you, sir," Hakuro repeated, hunching over the array. Alphonse stifled a chuckle as the younger officer's glasses immediately fogged up. The hapless Thomen reminded him a great deal of the now-Captain Fury.

Hakuro had been attached to Al's unit as an expert in communications, despite his being hopelessly myopic and notoriously clumsy. He and Al had met when Hakuro had tripped and fallen against him in the mess tent, sending his laden tray straight into Al's face.

Al still had to fight the impulse to laugh whenever he remembered the incident. The awkward corporal had blanched sheet white when he realized the man blinking at him through gravy and unidentifiable meat bits was the famed Soul Alchemist, Lieutenant Colonel Alphonse Elric.

Al had first attempted to assuage the officer's panic by smiling kindly through his sopping mask of goop. Far from reassured, Hakuro had flinched and turned an astonishing shade of white. Closing his eyes tight behind his glasses and bracing himself as though for an executioner's axe. But after a moment passed without reprimand, Hakuro dared to crack one eye, just in time to see the lieutenant colonel briefly lower one eyelid. Despite the wink, the young officer flinched again as the Soul Alchemist inserted a goop-coated finger into his mouth, swallowed and winced in disgust.

"Corporal Hakuro--"

Alphonse wouldn't have thought Thomen could have gone any paler without passing out—but the younger man had managed it, attaining the color of paste when Al addressed him by name. There was a hush as every neck in the tent craned around for a look, morbidly riveted by the luckless officer's fate.

"Thank you for your assistance in testing the assault capabilities of canned meat. It seems that my theory was correct: military rations are better suited as an offensive arsenal," Al stated, straight-faced.

There was silence as every man in earshot processed that Lieutenant Colonel Elric had in fact said what he just said. Then someone at the far end groaned in the same moment someone else laughed, and it wasn't long before the entire mess was roaring.

Hakuro's anxious look melted into one of stunned gratitude as he realized he wasn't going to be bellowed at. Alphonse watched, caught between amusement and sympathy as the young officer's mouth opened and shut, apparently attempting to stammer out either his thanks or an apology. Young Hakuro seemed far too stunned to stand without assistance, so Alphonse pulled the smaller man to his feet with one gravy-splattered hand, then shucked off his uniform jacket and used it to wipe his hair, hands and face. When he finished he offered it to the younger man, reversed to expose the clean lining. "Your glasses are coated, Corporal."

Hakuro looked at the ruined jacket uncomprehendingly, his expression turning horrified all over again. "Sir, I can pay for your uniform—"

A chuckle escaped Al as he reached over and whisked the shorter man's glasses off his face. He wiped them with the un-spattered part of his jacket as he spoke. "No you won't. Not if I've anything to say about it. You've done me a favor." He handed the glasses back to Hakuro, as clean as he could make them. "Uniforms aren't really my style. Thanks to you I'll be in civvies for the rest of the operation. As long as no one lets on that I've got a spare." He cocked an eyebrow at the younger man, grinning in a way that, to Thomen's mind, suited mischievous six-year-olds, not lieutenant colonels who could have you cleaning toilets for the rest of your career. "You wouldn't report me, would you, Corporal?"

Hakuro gaped at him slack-jawed for a moment, then shut his mouth with a snap and saluted. "No sir!"

Al remembered this as the younger man set his glasses on the table and worked up his courage to speak. The effort it cost him informed Al that the corporal wasn't delivering the mail out of his usual thoughtfulness.

When Al had inquired as to how someone so obviously academic had ended up enlisting, Havoc related the word through the officers' grapevine that the young man had been pushed into service by his father, the General Hakuro, in order to "make something of him". From an ironic Colonel Breda and sympathetic Captain Fury Al was informed that the young man's assignment had been an intended slight, a chain on Al's neck some higher up in the political and military hierarchy who had an ax to grind with his brother's name on it. Breda's sardonic addendum to Havoc was forcing those not suited to be anything but civilians into military life often _did_ make something of them. Corpses, usually.

Al had been surprised to learn that this Hakuro was the son of the General Hakuro, whose family he and his brother had saved on the fateful train ride that brought them to the attention of the state.

Corporal Hakuro, for his part, seemed all too aware of the disappointment he was to his father—a man who might have been Fuhrer, had democracy not reared its ugly head.

Saddled with Thomen, his debilitating esteem, and its constant strain on team performance, most officers would have assigned him to some anonymous corner and quietly filed for a transfer.

Alphonse decided to offer Thomen an opportunity to build the confidence he lacked. After close questioning and queries into the younger man's academic background, Al took the corporal under his wing and reassigned him to communication and cipher after discovering his native talent in both areas. Before his transfer, Corporal Hakuro had sat behind a rifle at a dead-end post. The part of Al that loved learning and intelligence for its own sake cringed at the near waste of an eager and brilliant mind.

But Thomen's shyness still crippled him to the point that even speaking up amongst friends was an exercise in resolve, so Al waited patiently as Thomen mustered his fragile confidence. He seemed to find it in a picture of the twins that stood on the camp table, with a smaller photo of Arelana laughing (Al's favorite picture of his wife) tucked into its frame. "Sir, I want to request permission to be a part of your scouting mission today."

Al stilled. He had been expecting something like this. "Why?"

Thomen looked at him as though he couldn't quite believe Al had asked. "To help! I mean, to serve the country bravely." The younger man squared himself into what he likely believed a determined and heroic pose.

Lieutenant Colonel Elric looked at him without expression. "Request denied."

Thomen stared at him for a moment, looking crestfallen but somehow unsurprised, before he looked away. "So. I _am_ useless." The Corporal's was voice soft and so dead with conviction that Al's eyes narrowed in realization. _If that's what he's been telling himself—or _someone _has been telling him—all along, it's not surprising he has no confidence in his abilities._

Feeling old, Al closed his eyes and thought hard about what he would say next. Thomen was smarter than this, he knew. If it hadn't been for the young man's blasted general father…

"Corporal, why do you think I put you with cryptography and research?" Al held up a hand, forestalling his subordinate's reply. He _had _to wake the young man to his own worth, before he did irreparable damage trying to prove he had some. "I'm about to tell you. It was because in the field your effectiveness was limited to the number of bullets in a gun. You were merely a means to pulling a trigger, a titanic waste of your own intellect and the time and effort that went into your education. It also should have occurred to you that sitting behind a gun rather than behind a cryptograph had the potential of killing our own men, not only Aerugan soldiers." The lieutenant colonel held up his hand again to fend off another denial from his subordinate. "Not by any action of yours. But had I failed to take action and put you where you were badly needed, any subsequent deaths would have been squarely on my head. Do you understand, Thomen? I put you on cipher because employing resources to prevent casualties on _both_ sides is my job. And I'm not tapping you for this mission because communication will not be an issue, and you're too valuable to be rifle-fodder." _And far too eager to __be__ rifle-fodder for me to allow you to come along. _Al closed his eyes and turned his face from his subordinate. "In the end, believing how vital you are to others is entirely up to you, Corporal. But please take my word for it: Life is too precious to waste hating yourself and refusing to value your own talents."

Al looked back at Hakuro. The young man appeared to be listening to him, even if bitterness still clouded his eyes, and that gave him hope. Al continued:

"As long as I'm in command, resources will go where they're needed, and a soldier will be put where he can preserve the most life. _That's _why you're not in a ditch behind a rifle. That's why I'm here commanding soldiers despite the fact that I may have to kill with alchemy, a tool that should only be used to preserve lives. My being here preserves lives on both sides because alchemy provides alternatives to killing. Another man wouldn't have the option."

At the sadness and resignation in Al's tone the younger man's tight expression slackened into understanding, tinged with not a little embarrassment. Alphonse, seeing this, pushed his memories to the back of his mind and gave his subordinate a direct look. "I suspect you would have realized sooner just how indispensable you _truly _are, if your father hadn't expressed his opinion on the matter to you."

Thomen looked at him, eyes widening behind his glasses. "How did you--?" He bit down on his words as Lieutenant Colonel Elric pointed to the letters still fisted in the other man's hand, giving him a half-smile of wry empathy. "No one goes to get mail and doesn't check for their own." _And you never look quite so unhappy in your own skin as when the general deigns to write._ It was unprofessional at the very least, but even Al's slow fuse had started to burn at the constant "encouragement" the corporal received from his father. He'd never read them, but his subordinates and Thomen's compatriots had no such scruples. Even 2nd lieutenant Connor, who had served during the Fuhrer's tenure when the army's corruption was at its peak, had been aghast at some of those letters. "It's your business how you deal with your father, but I may remind him that he still owes me a favor, and I would thank him to not second-guess how I assign my subordinates, especially to my subordinates."

Al wondered if the surprise in Hakuro's face was due to his daring to rebuke a general, or daring to do so within his son's hearing. As it turned out, it was neither. "My father owes you a favor?"

Thomen's commanding officer gave him a half smile. "You were probably too young to remember the Eastern Rebellion hijacking that train to Central."

"I _do _remember, but I don't understand how --" Al watched sudden understanding leave the younger man's eyes wide and jaw agape. "I never realized…that was _you_ with the Fullmetal Alchemist?" Thomen seemed to realize how incredulous he sounded and flushed. "Lieutenant Colonel sir, I apologize for my tone."

Alphonse laughed. "Don't worry about it. Most people still don't know that I was the armor suit that followed my brother around. There're times _I_ have trouble believing it. Or believing that the boy in the General's cabin would ever serve under me." He winked.

"Well, I wouldn't…I wouldn't mind if you did write my father, sir." Al had to smile at the tiny spark of defiance in the corporal's eye.

"I'll do that, then. But before that…would it be all right if I claimed my mail? The briefing is in fifteen minutes." Al held out a hand for his share of the Corporal's burden.

"Oh! Sorry sir. Forgot I had them." Hakuro sheepishly handed him the letters.

Alphonse took the envelopes and fanned them. The first, Arelana's, got tucked inside his coat pocket to read when he got a moment alone. The second was recognizable by its cramped, spiky handwriting as Ed's. Al grinned and ripped it open, holding it up to the glow of the array.

The letter was unusually short. Checking the stamp on the envelope affirmed that his brother had written from the laboratory in East City a day before his leave ought to have begun. Alphonse hoped for both Edward's and General Mustang's sake that his brother's leave hadn't been pushed back again. He had heard about what happened the last time his brother had been dragged away from his own research to assist "some jumped-up, pompous, brigadier general's toady" (Ed had assigned the other state alchemist this distinction with his usual grace and tact) in a state research project that overreached the other man's abilities. Ed had been forced to finish the other alchemist's research on ethyl mercaptan (the chemical that made skunks so potent) to discover possible military applications.

When Al's brother had got back to Central, he had sealed the windows of General Mustang's office (it had been vacant at the time; Edward had mounted his attack during the lunch hour) and alchemized a vile cloud of the substance inside of it. The elder Elric thought it very poetic to provide evidence of the chemical's effectiveness—all while wreaking his revenge. His final touch had been to carefully tape his report inside the door before he triggered the array and ran.

Yet the letter held nothing of his brother's usual blow-by-blow account of his escapades. There were only a few short sentences that looked as though they had been scrawled more hastily than usual:

_Al—_

_When you get a chance, take a look at this array and see if you can make it more stable. _

--there was a stream of alchemic diagrams, followed by a complex array. It was far neater than his brother's handwriting. It looked as though Ed had drawn the diagram first, and then wrote the letter around it.

_Louis and Rick asked when their dad was coming home when I talked to Winry. They told me to tell you they love you. A letter arrived from Lana today; she asked if I could forward it to you. I didn't peek, so don't worry—_Al chuckled at that, drawing a glance from Hakuro. There had been a time when he'd had to hide letters by his then-girlfriend from his older brother. Ed had never quite forgiven Al for the teasing he had endured for writing to Winry. His retribution ten years later had been to commit particularly sappy parts of Al's letters to memory and recite them aloud, while his thoroughly mortified younger brother chased him around and over the furniture.

_--Hers should arrive with mine. Miss you, Al._ _Take care of yourself—_

_Ed_

Al smiled to himself as he examined his brother's diagram. With a second look the smile faded into recognition, then intense concentration. Alphonse snagged his chalk out of a pocket, removed the pile of reports and alchemy manuals to his cot, then started to scrawl on the bare wood of the table. Biting his bottom lip, his hand and arm a blur, Al copied his brother's diagram twice, checked them against the original, and then started making changes in the second copy.

"…Stabilize in the third instead of the fourth…the regeneration point is right…"Alphonse muttered to himself, tapping the chalk above a sigil. "Move the earth element to _there_…Ha!"

Hakuro, who had moved to stand behind the lieutenant colonel, jumped at his sudden shout. Al redrew the array with his additions, stared at it critically, and began to laugh. "We did it!" _Almost ten years, but we did it. We're past the difficult part. _

Hakuro stiffened in shock as he was swept into a rib-crushing hug. "We did it!" the lieutenant colonel crowed again.

"Sir?" the corporal finally managed to gasp. "…I—can't breathe—"

"Oh. Forgive me," Immediately contrite, Al set the smaller man back on his feet. He started to laugh again, wiping his eyes and beaming.

"Brother, you're a genius!" Alphonse whooped suddenly, throwing his arms wide in boisterous, boundless triumph. Hakuro backed surreptitiously for the door, fearing another spine-cracking embrace. He had never seen the lieutenant colonel display this alarmingly physical brand of insanity before. "Sir?" he attempted.

The Soul Alchemist whirled as if he'd forgotten Hakuro existed. "Oh! Sorry! Do you need me to dismiss you?"

"Yes sir. But sir…" he faltered, until curiosity regained the upper hand. "What were you drawing?"

"This?" The lieutenant colonel gestured with his chalk, his smile blinding. "This is a theoretical array that my brother and I have been working on to return human-chimeras to their original form. My brother's finally created a failsafe for all organic components to reform if the human components reach a terminal deconstruction point."

In the grip of his excitement, it took Alphonse a moment to realize that Hakuro was staring at him blankly.

"Oh, um…" Al groped to translate the alchemic jargon. "Chimeras can be separated into their original bodies, but with this array, if they start to die during the process they'll be reformed without self-destructing."

He was smiling so hard his face hurt. He and Ed were one step closer to being able to resolve human chimeras. One step closer to ensuring that what had happened to Nina would never happen again._ We couldn't save you, Nina. But if we can save others…it will be one less ghost to haunt Brother…maybe even chip a bit more from the mass of guilt he insists on carrying…_

He couldn't wait to let his brother know about the array. Alphonse groped briefly in his pocket for paper and a pen, then thought for a moment and shoved it all back in his jacket. _Why write when I'll tell him myself tomorrow?_ He smiled inwardly, picturing his brother's reaction.

"Amazing, sir," Hakuro contributed, sounding awestruck. He stared at the diagrams as though trying to decipher them. Al grinned at him, and the Corporal smiled back shyly.

"Corporal Hakuro, could you do me a favor?"

"Anything, sir." Hakuro's smile was full-fledged now. The lieutenant colonel's enthusiasm was infectious.

"Whoever's on cleaning duty for the tents shouldn't touch anything in here, especially the table. In fact, my tent is off limits until I clear them. Could you tell them that?"

"Sir!" Hakuro saluted smartly, then turned on his heel and marched out.

Al abruptly realized that he was standing on cold, soggy canvas with one boot off, his shirt only half-buttoned and his suspenders hanging limp against his legs. He sighed with humor and finished dressing.

----------

"Oi, Al. Over here." Brigadier General Jean Havoc waved affably from the where he stood by the door of the officers' tent, shielding his inevitable cigarette from the rain with his other hand. Havoc never had been one to stand on his rank with friends.

A bright grin flashed back at him under the younger man's hood. "Am I late for the briefing?"

"Nah," Havoc waved dismissively, cigarette flaring in the dark as he took a long drag. "We're waiting for two more after you."

Al wrinkled his nose at the wreath of smoke surrounding Jean's head. "Those things'll kill you someday, you know."

Havoc grinned around the cigarette and blew a puff of smoke, watching lazily as it mingled with the misting rain. "Not before my wife does." Havoc cocked an eyebrow at his subordinate. "Besides, I'm your commanding officer, not your brother. Don't think you can manhandle me like you do him," he asserted around another stream of smoke. "I haven't gotten to talk to you since you reported in last week. How are things? How's the boss, anyway? He blown up anyone important lately?"

"Not lately," Al shrugged, defending the facts if not his brother's sanity—something that Al often questioned himself.

"Brother's fine. Kids keep him happy and busy. The general's keeping him busy and insane."

Havoc laughed. "Mustang's loving every minute of Fullmetal hating his guts, I'm sure. How's your end of the family?"

"Well, Louis and Rick are doing really well with alchemy. The last time I was home they managed to alchemize their spinach halfway into chocolate before the entire thing destabilized and blew up." Al's smile was rueful. "That was fun to clean off the walls."

Havoc laughed. He could afford to; his daughters didn't routinely attempt to transmute things into chocolate pudding. Al's sons, on the other hand, seemed committed to the discovery of new and bigger messes.

"How's Arelana?" Jean Havoc rolled on.

Al's eyes glazed over and he smiled dreamily, taking on the vaguely stunned look that earned him choruses of eyerolls and giggling from friends and family alike.

"Lana is _wonderful_."

"Jeez, Alphonse. Almost ten years and you're still like a moonstruck teenager." Havoc smirked knowingly at his subordinate.

Al gave the older man a goofy grin. "So? What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, except you two force everyone within five meters to either flee for their lives or stay and die of how ridiculously sweet you are. No, you can keep the hormones, thanks. Me and Annette do just fine, and I couldn't be happier with my girls." Al had met Havoc's daughters at a military ball. They were a very cute ten and twelve, with their father's blue eyes and varied shades of their mother's auburn hair. "Though I never got how you and your brother managed to snag two of the best-looking women in Amestris after only two years after getting back from—from wherever you were--" Havoc waved a hand blankly "--when I had to look over a bloody decade to find a girl the General couldn't steal away from me."

Al's grin made his sweet-natured, still-boyish face into something more demonic in nature. It was this smile that let people remember he was, in fact, related to Edward. "You never thought that the General's getting married had anything to do with the sudden drop in competition?" He offered innocently.

Jean stared at him for a moment, cigarette dangling from his lip. "Anyone ever tell you that you fight dirty?"

Al's grin got a little wider. "Only Brother, and only because you have to cheat better than he does to beat him."

Havoc looked as though he were groping for some retort to salve his dignity when something beyond Al's shoulder caught his attention. "Looks like the rest of the group is here." Al followed his eyes to the mist-lined silhouettes materializing through the rain, familiar figures bulked by oil cloth or greatcoats. Havoc flicked the cigarette away to smolder in a puddle as Al pulled the flap aside and they all filed in.

Once salutes were exchanged and everyone had found a seat, the brigadier general's manner turned from his usual easy good humor to deadly serious.

"We've had reports of alchemy up at the installation in the north-west quadrant," Havoc began. The tent fell immediately silent. Havoc indicated the position with an unlit cigarette on the map of Aerugo's border with Amestris pinned to the canvas wall.

Lieutenant Klaus raised two fingers. The brigadier general nodded to her. "Isn't that where our border guards were reportedly taken?"

"Yes." Havoc's face was grim. "It also appears that people from the border villages on both sides have been rounded up and taken there. Children, mostly."

Al propped his elbows on the table, resting the lower half of his face behind his hands. He didn't want to voice his suspicions before Havoc gave him a reason to do so. He was trying to find some alternative to what he feared alchemy and captured children implied.

"It looks like alchemy is only being employed inside the complex, not on the perimeter. That could change, so we're keeping you well-equipped in case of assault, but few enough that you should be able to get in and out without triggering an alert. Make sure you leave no trace of entry. We don't want to let on how you got in if another assault has to be made. Remember that we pull out to join General Talbot in the west tomorrow. If you have the opportunity to free any prisoners, take it."

Havoc leaned forward, bracing his hands on table. The movement threw his face into the oily shadow of the lamplight. The fresh fag in his teeth was the only feature that defied the dimness other than his eyes, which considered them all unhurriedly. Al found himself straightening unconsciously to attention even as his team did the same. Jean had been a friend when he was a boy, and time and trial had only tied the Flame Alchemist's one-time group of subordinates more closely over the years that bridged now and then. Havoc had always been swift in action and deliberate in his consideration, and if he gave a man his loyalty and protection there was no question of that man's worth.

Apparently Al's group met his approval, for Havoc nodded once and gave them a grim smile. "If you're caught inside the complex, all bets are off. I want you to grab everyone you can and get out of there. No heroics. Burn your way out if you have to. Any questions?" The brigadier general glanced around the table. When no one offered to speak, he straightened. "Reconvene to leave at the south end of camp in half an hour. Lieutenant Colonel Elric is in command. Dismissed." As they rose to leave, Havoc cut Al a look and tapped two fingers on the table, telling him to stay behind.

Once everyone was out of earshot, Havoc leaned in next to Al, propping himself against the edge of the table and striking a match. "So, what do you think?"

Memory snapped the softer lines of Al's face taut and sharp in the hazy light. "I hate to say it, but this report sounds like the Fifth Laboratory. I can't see any use for prisoners around alchemy except as test subjects. Children would be even more…convenient," his mouth twisted on the word. "…because of their weakness and smaller food requirement." It was discomfiting to realize how easily he could think along the lines of a less ethical alchemist. _Then again, Brother and I have come across so many, and tread such a fine line ourselves in what's considered ethical alchemic practice, it shouldn't be surprising I can recognize and predict their methods._ "What do you think?"

"I think you've got the target in your crosshairs." The tip of Havoc's cigarette flared as he took a long breath. Alphonse wouldn't have ventured to guess whether his grimace was at the taste or the subject matter.

He asked, "There weren't any actual sightings of chimera, right?"

Jean shook his head once, a sharp jerk down and away that burned a line in the air with his cigarette. "Doesn't mean they won't be there, though." His frown deepened as he pulled the butt from his mouth and tapped the unlit end against the map's edge. "The brass pushed this operation through on the quiet this afternoon, which is why this isn't the scout-and-skedaddle I said it'd be. Someone high up is real jumpy about this place. Not that there was anything said directly _to_ me." He took another drag, closed his eyes and released it with a thoughtful look. "But the _general_ consensus seems to be that there'd be no crying from on high if this place happened to burn to the ground."

Al's expression darkened. If Havoc's information had come from General Mustang, then there was no doubt of its accuracy. "That's not been the usual policy." As a matter of fact, their standing orders were to avoid provoking Aerugo, to the point of masking the size of the force patrolling inside their own borders. Open hostility and gun-waving toward the fomenting elements inside the southern nation had been ruled out early as Amestris observed the progression of the Aerugan's civil war, a war that had already lasted three years. One thing even the most hell-raking Amestrian generals did not want was for warring Aerugo to suddenly unite against their longtime rival to the north.

That had been the _spoken_ consensus, anyway…

Al closed his eyes and blew an irritated breath through his bangs. If there was one thing he despised, it was being manipulated. Particularly without ascertaining his puppeteer's intent.

"Are they actually thinking about starting an incident with Aerugo?" he asked. _Are we about to be forced into another pointless war?_ was left unsaid.

Havoc only shrugged, smiling his easy smile and rolling his eyes at the woven ceiling. "Figure we'll cross that bridge if we get to it, chief. I only made brigadier last year, remember, and there'll always be things that the old dogs don't let the upstart pups know." Havoc's lazy gaze turned serious again as he glanced back at the younger man. "Anything else?"

Al nodded, reaching over to indicate a bold red line on the map with his forefinger. "Something's bothering me about the perimeter. There should be more security than what's marked on this, if all the prisoners in the area are getting transported there." The state alchemist tapped the latest report among those spread across the Amestrian half of the chart. "But the scouts backed the numbers every time. The Aerugan patrols consist of a handful of two man teams, no more, and they're very slack about observation."

"Could be overconfident." Havoc shrugged, elaborately casual.

"Or this whole thing could be one huge booby trap. Which is what you're thinking." Al gave his commanding officer a knowing look. Havoc smiled back grimly.

"When it looks too good to be true…"

"It is." Al finished the adage. He got up to take a closer look at the map. "Every angle of approach is through dense woods. There could be just about anything in there, but if its alchemy we're watching for…Brother and I could have rigged arrays to go off if more than a certain number of people passed over them, or if someone weren't carrying something the traps were rigged to ignore." Al's brow furrowed. "There's no more than one team of two patrolling at any given time? You're certain?"

Havoc nodded. Al's mouth thinned. "Probably triggered by number of bodies, then. That would be the simplest and most foolproof way of doing it. Rigging the traps for iron content or something would be more fiddly, not to mention having animals set them off accidentally…" Al trailed off, deep in thought. "The traps probably don't extend into the complex, since they have to move prisoners around in varying numbers. Meaning we should take the guards out at distance."

"Sniper?"

Al shook his head. "No good. You could set arrays to go off if two people were to die inside their influence. I know I could, anyway. We need to move them, somehow…" _And I _will not_ kill… not until there is no other choice._

"Distraction, then. Have to draw them to you."

Al nodded. "That'd probably be the best bet. Second option is putting a hole beneath them and hoping outside alchemy doesn't trigger the arrays. Another is to take the oxygen out of the air around them until they pass out. If I were laying traps, I'd allow for the possibility of unconsciousness in my own men. Soldiers aren't so disposable that you can let them die if they fall asleep on duty."

"Not yet, anyway. We're still a valuable resource." Havoc's lighter clacked in emphasis as he lit a new cigarette. "I like the oxygen trick. I recommend that you lure them to you and use it to drop them. We need people for questioning. Go on and get ready. And Al…" Havoc paused, exhaled in a sooty cloud.

"Don't die." He said it straight, then cracked a grin. "Your brother would kill me."

Al smiled crookedly, saluting as the tent flap closed behind him. "I'll do my best."

----------

They were within sight of the final fence before Al found the first array.

Part of him had been hoping the scouts information had been false, that smoke or flash-grenades had been mistaken somehow for alchemy. Aerugo's original government had a standing campaign to eradicate alchemy—and alchemists when they were found. It was a policy that had served Amestris well—several secret practitioners had smuggled themselves and their research across the border, to be put to work by the Amestrian government and swell the ranks of state alchemists at their disposal. Aerugo's rebelling faction was more fanatical if anything, declaring alchemy a perversion against nature in an echo of Ishbalan sentiment.

Finding an alchemic array on Aerugan soil sent anxious serpents sliding through Al's guts. But he pushed his unease away. He had a job to do, and distractions were expensive.

They had been moving slowly, using sticks to brush aside debris, when Alphonse spotted a half-concealed pattern from the corner of his eye. He had his group back up a few yards, then cleared the rest of the half-rotten leaves away and studied the hidden trap intently. It was not of a type to be triggered by alchemic reactions. Al's guess to Havoc had been correct: this array, and those connected to it, were rigged to go off if three men or more passed over just one of them. It was a nasty piece of work, made to react moments after it detected the requisite number of bodies. Meaning it would wait until more people had moved within its influence before it went off. Then it would deconstruct all the organic material within a two foot radius. They weren't designed to kill. They were designed to maim, to leave a man screaming and without whatever limbs had been in range of the reaction, but alive. Al stared at it, feeling his stomach go hollow.

_Do they want invaders for questioning...?_

He looked away toward the looming black bulk of the prison.

_Or do they have another reason for taking people alive?_

Despite the tense situation, it was with great satisfaction that Al put his hands together and pressed them to the ground. _At least these little monstrosities will be going hungry today. _"Be ready in case this gets someone's attention," he called back to the group.

There was a smell of ozone and a flash of blue light as a wave rippled though the ground, erasing the dirt-drawn arrays. Al watched for the light of new reactions triggered by his alchemy, but there were none.

He moved back into the knot of soldiers. "All right. I've removed the ground traps but we still need to watch for arrays on the trees. I'm going to drop the guards when they pass into the blind spot from the fortress windows. Daniels and Tocker, take their guns and stay in the middle. Then we'll go through the fence. Everyone ready?" Curt nods and grim smiles were his reply. They all moved stealthily into position, crouching amidst the trees. It wasn't long before the trees thinned enough to spot shapes moving along the fence.

"Lieutenant Colonel…"

"I see them." Al clapped and held his hands out to the air. For a moment it looked as though nothing had happened. Then one guard staggered into the other and both collapsed to the ground. Al smiled tightly. There'd been no noise, and the downed guards were invisible from the windows. Best of all, no one had been killed.

Al thought,_ Let's hope we can keep it that way_…

He waved his group forward to the fence. They disarmed and bound the sleeping guards, then stepped back so that Al could conceal them under a layer of alchemically-merged leaves. Then they were through the fence and in the shadow of the north wall. "Lieutenant Klaus, where's the best place to make a door?"

The lieutenant scanned the squat, two-story structure, her eyes narrowed in thought.

"If it's a typical installation, we should bore in there." She pointed to a spot on the north east corner. "No more than two feet from the ground, though, or else we'll run into the basement ceiling."

"Right. All right, Klaus behind me to navigate, Lane behind her. Double up once we're through. Daniels and Tocker, Peterson and Ellis, Connor and Bell, Hart and Wallace. Don't follow until I give the word."

Al pressed his hands to the wall, and a square plug of it vanished. The cross section of the hole was a good meter thick. He crouched, peering through the darkness for movement and mentally evaluating the crawlway's dimensions. _Here's where being taller than Brother becomes a problem_. The thought let him smile a little as he wormed through on his elbows and knees. Alphonse got to the end and held his breath, listening intently for any noise other than the pounding of his heart…then widened the tunnel toward the floor and shoved himself the rest of the way through. He landed cat-soft on the stone floor, alert for anything as his eyes adjusted from the nearly pitch-dark of the outside to the light filtering through the door on the far wall.

They were lucky. It looked as though they had broken into a spare office or archive room. Al crossed to the sole door and made sure it was locked. "It's clear."

One by one his team moved into the room. "Ah. Nice to be out of the rain." Sergeant Marcus Lane, being himself and therefore a smartass, often felt need to comment on a given situation. Al smirked a bit as Klaus shushed him. "Where're we going, Lieutenant?" Al addressed her.

"Floors above us should be the main cell block," Klaus responded immediately. "This level should be high security cells or laboratories, or some combination. You can probably go straight through the floor about…here, to be in the corridor between the cells." She pointed to a corner overhead.

"Good. I want to check the floors above us, then head back down and hopefully come out the way we came. Let's move this table so we can get a leg up." _No need to use alchemy unless I have to,_ Al added to himself. _Less to clean up later._ He picked up an end and Lane grabbed the other, moving the metal desk soundlessly into place. Then Al stepped up from the floor and placed his hands on the ceiling. After a small flash, he pushed the section he had cut slowly through the floor, listening for footsteps as he did so. Hearing nothing, Al shoved the plug the rest of the way through and set it to the side, then grabbed the lip of the opening and pulled himself off the table to peer around. They had moved into a closed corridor, with iron bars marking the cells that lined one side. _Why is does the place seem so deserted? We should have run into more guards by now…_

"Wow, Colonel. Been working out? Ow." From the sound of it, Lane had run into Lieutenant Klaus' fist once again.

Al quietly dropped back onto the table. "Looks like the coast is clear. But you first, Sergeant, in case I'm wrong."

"Ha, ha, sir." Lane shoved his rifle through first, then Al made a stirrup of his hands boosted him after it.

Al helped Klaus through last, then jumped high enough through the opening that his chest and arms cleared the hole. He flung his hands out to brace against the floor above, pushing up until he sat on the edge, then pulled himself clear and replaced the bevel. It slid seamlessly into the floor.

His team had fanned out around the hole, rifles drawn. "Lieutenant Colonel…" For once, Lane sounded unsettled. "Sir, look." He lowered his rifle and gestured toward the cells.

Al looked, felt his jaw clench. Even Klaus's stone façade cracked slightly. "Children…" she murmured.

Behind one iron-ribbed door, the dim light of the storm filtered through the sole window and outlined a small form. It whimpered softly.

Al's face twisted as the sound wrenched something in his chest. It took effort to turn away toward his men. "Go and wake them up as quietly as you can. Hart, guard the door at the other end. Get my attention if someone comes, but don't shoot unless they spot you. We're getting all of them out _now_."

"Sir." His team spread out along the cells.

Al turned to the nearest cell and the pair of terrified eyes that peered at him through the bars. Instinct told him to crouch down, making himself smaller and less threatening to the frightened child.

"It's all right," he whispered, smiling kindly. "We're here to rescue you. My name's Al, what's yours?"

"Kaila." Her hair had been shaved, and she was so thin and brittle-looking that Al hadn't been able to tell what gender she was until she spoke. Hope seemed to flash across her face when she dared to look him in the eye.

"Hello, Kaila. Would you mind if I got you out of there?"

"You have keys?" Kaila's tone was definitely hopeful now.

"I've got something better. But it might be a little startling. Can you promise not to yell? I don't want the guards to come," Alphonse explained gently, ignoring the little mental voice that was telling him tohurry, hurry, hurry. You couldn't hurry a frightened child; Al had learned that much from his sons. Especially when it would only take one child crying out at the wrong time to get caught. Kaila nodded vigorously and covered her mouth with both hands. Al clapped, touched the bars—and with a flare of blue light, a child-sized section of iron disappeared.

"Like fireworks." Kaila whispered, her brown eyes were wide and wondering. Al smiled. "Let's get you out of there, Kaila."

The girl's bare feet made soft slaps on the stone as she walked out to him and Al realized he had a new problem. _We have to get them through the woods without shoes. There isn't anything organic here to transmute into leather or cloth._ That meant slower progress back to camp. Which meant they would be even more vulnerable than he had counted on. _Need to give them some kind of protection in case the guards pick up on what's happening…_

Down the row, whatever lay in Connor's field surgery bag had opened two more cells. "Sir, these two are too weak to walk. They've been starved." Outrage tightened his sharp face.

Inspiration struck Al like his brother's metal fist. "Everyone back away from the cells. I've got an idea." Al clapped his hands and ran down the row, brushing each metal grid with his hands as he passed it. The metal glowed white-gold, then pooled. As if possessed by a will of its own, the molten metal streamed from all quarters to form two softly-glowing mounds that rose and solidified before Al. The metal crackled and its outline sharpened, and suddenly two suits of armor stood before him, mirror images of the armor his soul had once inhabited. Al touched each gauntlet with a brief smile of satisfaction as blue sigils gleamed across the metal and red witchlight flared to life in the hollows of each helmet. The disorientation of looking back at himself through another set of eyes was still unsettling, but he had grown accustomed to it._ Me, myself and I. _Al smiled to himself. The armor suits cocked their hollow heads, empty eye sockets twinkling as though they shared his amusement. These would be the defenders the kids needed to escape without pulling too many from Al's own team.

With the bars gone, the captives waded into the midst of their rescuers. Klaus in particular gathered a large knot where she crouched, reassuring them with her kind hands and steady voice. Al took a quick count: about twenty all told, four of whom seemed too starved to move without help. They were all very small; the oldest was probably no more than eight. Some were crying, pathetically relieved and utterly exhausted. Several were gawking at the suits of armor. Al's team was staring as well, though some less openly than others. "Lt. Colonel, what in…?" Tocker murmured.

Al patted a metal shoulder. "Don't worry. These'll help us get the sick ones out."

Lane slapped his forehead melodramatically in Tocker's direction. "Jeez, you rookies are ignorant. Haven't you ever heard how the Lieutenant Colonel earned his handle?"

The sergeant's smirk turned sickly as the Lt. Colonel in question cast a dry look in his direction. "I seem to recall that you had to be convinced that the armor suits weren't ghosts the first time you saw them. Lieutenant Klaus, just how long did we spend talking Sergeant Lane out of that tree?"

"Exactly one hour and two minutes, sir. And he was a warrant officer at the time." There was the barest hint of a smile in Klaus's voice.

Lane smiled crookedly and raised his hands over his head. "I surrender. I'll never pick on rookies again." Tocker and Daniels shot him meat-eating looks. Klaus merely sighed in a way that suggested if the sergeant got shot he would thoroughly deserve it.

During this exchange one suit of armor moved over to where Ellis had propped the children too ill to walk. It crouched and scooped up the two that looked most fragile with a delicacy that belied its hard bulk. Then it turned its glowing gaze on the other two, and the Lt. Colonel's voice echoed from its hollow body. "Get on my back, please, and I'll carry you out of here." Wide-eyed, the children obeyed, scrambling onto its shoulders.

Al indicated the suit that toted the kids. "Peterson and Ellis, I want you to take the children back the way we came. I'll send this one with you. Remember, if the armor gives orders, it's me talking." Both men shot looks at the metal automaton, but took the statement in stride.

"All right, you lot," Peterson stepped up and called cheerfully to his charges. "I need you all to line up behind me. Whoever's the quietest gets a prize when we get back to camp. My buddy's gonna follow you, and the, uh…armor person will lead the way."

"Armor person, huh?" Al's voice sounded amused coming from his own mouth and both suits of armor. Ellis gave all three a fish-eyed look. The second set of armor found the seam of the bevel and lifted it out, and the one carrying the children dropped through. Peterson jumped down after it and Ellis lowered kids to him. He turned and saluted before jumping through himself.

"The rest of us are going to make sure this floor is clear of prisoners and then go back to the lowest level." Al continued once the bevel was back in place.

They searched the remaining cellblocks on the floor and found no one. The hollow feeling in Al's stomach grew with every cell they found empty. _Are we too late? Did they move them, or…?_ He shook his head. Better to leave that thought unfinished.

They retraced their steps through the archives room. Al waited until his team had armed themselves to unlock the door. Beyond it was a hall washed lividly by the low-powered lamps. Bloody light seemed to drip from their rifle barrels as the cluster of soldiers moved through the passage.

After an abrupt turn they were faced with a huge set of barred, metal doors. Al could see the tell-tale fracture patterns of transmutation running across its surface, far larger and coarser than in something he or his brother would have transmuted. Al ran one hand across it thoughtfully. The coarse work indicated either little control over the alchemic response or that making it had stretched an alchemist to the limit of his or her power. _Don't think much of their taste, either_, Al thought, grimacing. The heavy iron writhed with the frozen likenesses of human faces, mouths agape and contorted as though they were screaming in agony, all seemingly straining to escape their metal confines.

Alphonse's eyes traced the intricate horror as he thought: _I think I can give up the hope that this was a detention center that just happened to house a laboratory…_

"Eww," Lane muttered, catching sight of the grisly artifact. "Somebody needs to fire their decorator."

Alphonse fought down the sudden mad urge to laugh. Someone else giggled nervously.

"Then let's pretty it up a bit." Al rolled back his sleeves, mimicking Ed's customary gesture before he charged headfirst into trouble._ Everything I know I learned from you, Brother,_ Al thought affectionately at his absent sibling. For once Edward would be well out of danger.

"Everyone behind me, and stick close once we're in." The armor trudged to his side and Al paused, reminded of the first time he had invaded a lab like this. The specter of Shou Tucker was what made him look to his group. As his gaze encompassed them they could see the face that had always seemed too young and far too amiable to belong to a war-forged state alchemist had changed. Now his men could see, some of them for the first time, the steel that lay at their Colonel's core, unyielding as the grim shadow looming beside him.

"You may see things in here," the Soul Alchemist reminded, swiftly and softly, "that no one should ever have to see. Remember: do not shoot unless you are physically threatened. What seems like a monster may be human." _And what seems human may be a monster_, Al added silently to himself, glancing again at the faces in the door. The eyes of the Sewing-Life alchemist seemed to loom over them all, pale and empty with madness. Alphonse shook the image from his mind and looked to the armor, which nodded to him. "Everyone ready?"

There were nods and whispers of "Sir!"

Al nodded back silently, his pride in them evident. He turned back to the door.

"One—" Al placed his hands together. Rifles cocked behind him.

"Two—" His hands were on the door.

"THREE!" Light flared as the door was obliterated. The armor charged through, Al and the rest in its shadow. They skidded to a halt inside, eyes darting into every corner.

It took an eternal instant for Al's eyes to adjust to the lack of light before a sickly glow drew his gaze to the floor. The glow grew brighter, spreading like spilt lamp oil across perimeter of the floor. Vacuum took Al's heart as comprehension dawned—_they were standing on an array!_

"NO!" he cried, and clapped his hands—

The layer of dense ice had barely solidified beneath them before the array ripped it apart. The force of it threw Al's team into the walls and back through the doors. Al himself, closest to the heart of the reaction, leapt as high as he could, attempting to clear its field of effect. Icy shrapnel raked his face, leaving a burning trail across his cheek and eye. A large chunk of ice glanced across his forehead at blinding speed. The blow crumpled his knees on landing, and he barely caught himself as he fell forward. He pushed aside the surge of nausea, though with less success than he would have hoped. He was straining through the ringing in his ears to identify the noise echoing from further inside the chamber when something struck the back of his head.

Stars burst in the blackness and then he saw nothing at all.

---

Alphonse awoke to laughter. He shook his head muzzily, grimacing as something warm dripped into his eye and across his lips. He touched his tongue to it and tasted metal. Blood. His blood, and probably having something to do with the sledgehammer he would swear was laying into his skull. He squinted into the darkness around him, searching for movement from his men and the source of the laughter. His vision doubled once, then resolved, and he could make out a thin form clutching something to itself, shaking as it giggled shrilly. Alphonse winced as the high pitch of it pierced his head.

"Who are you?" Al demanded, flinching at the way his head throbbed when he talked. He repeated the words in his rudimentary Aerugan, reaching as though to clutch his head, though he was truly trying to bring his hands together and hoping the movement would go unnoticed. It was only then that he realized he had been restrained. His arms tugged uselessly against whatever was pinning his hands above his head.

The figure stepped into the stark light of one of the few overhead lamps, and Al could finally see what it held before itself. He recognized Lieutenant Klaus's slack from, face and hands made ghastly pale by the lights, and held in the grasp of a wiry, wasted-looking man in clothes that must have been fine once, before neglect made them ragged and lent them dark, questionable stains. The man was holding a pistol to the unconscious lieutenant's temple. "Let's get those hands up, shall we? I'm sure Amestris can't afford to lose yet another of its precious alchemists. And it would be a shame to have to shoot such a lovely young lady." The pistol-wielder spoke Amestrian with a strong accent. With his chin he indicated someone behind Alphonse, who spared a glance behind himself. Daniels and Connor were on their feet, though barely, which let Al hope that he hadn't been out for more than a few minutes. Tocker was on his hands and knees. Lane was sprawled on his chest, face down, and he wasn't moving. Alphonse hoped fervidly that the sergeant was only unconscious.

Al glanced at his restraints, taking stock of anything he might be able to exploit. His hands and feet were incased by stone stalactites that had sprouted from the floor and ceiling. He shifted around, testing for weakness, but the rock held him fast enough to abrade his skin when he shifted, and dangling this way offered him no leverage.

He grunted involuntarily when the movement jarred his head and an alarmed shout of "Colonel!" came from behind him. Tocker had caught sight of his CO's predicament.

"Don't move!" Al warned.

"I'd listen to him if I were you," the alchemist mocked. "Now, I wonder what my net has caught me…" He trailed off as Klaus opened her eyes and stiffened at the cold metal mouth pressed to her head. "I suggest you remain on your best behavior, my dear." The alchemist leered at her. Klaus's jaw tightened.

"Lieutenant, don't provoke him." Al injected as much calm as he could into the words. _I have a plan. _He tried to telegraph the thought to his lieutenant with his eyes alone. Alphonse thought he saw her get it, despite an ill-timed twitch as blood ran into his eye again, gumming his lashes and obscuring his vision.

"Oh, wisely spoken," the alchemist mocked, gracing Al with a twisted smile. "I suppose as you are my…guests…I should introduce myself. I am Varso, Aerugo's most talented biological alchemist." The man made a derisive bow over Klaus's helpless, raging eyes. "Now—_Lieutenant_ Colonel, isn't it?" the alchemist smirked, glancing at Al's epaulettes. "Although Amestrian ranks and reputations are so puffed up I suppose it hardly matters—yet Mother always preached good manners, even if they _are _wasted on Ammies, so if you'd be so kind as to introduce yourself…" Varso tittered shrilly.

"Alphonse Elric." Al bit out his name, twitching helplessly as blood trickled down his chin. His head was hammering worse than the few times he'd actually received a brain-rattling blow from Winry.

The Aerugan alchemist's pale eyes widened. "_Elric_," he repeated. "You're the Fullmetal Alchemist?"

"No. That's my brother." Al missed Ed suddenly. If his brother were here and fourteen again, he would have turned into a blond ball of fury at the mistake. _But Brother's safe and sound asleep in Riesembul, which is exactly where I'll be this time tomorrow if I can distract this guy for a few more minutes…_

"Actually, you're lucky it's me and not him. I'm a bit more understanding of crackpots and incompetent alchemists." Al said brightly, forcing his face into a broad, blithe smile, goading the man into some misstep he could exploit—so long as it didn't get him killed first. Above all else, he wanted the alchemist's attention on him and away from the others.

The man's veneer of sophistication and arrogance cracked, and for an instant Al looked in the eyes of insanity.

Then the alchemist slammed back into control, his face smoothing to its former condescending mask. "Oho. You're a brave one, I'll give you that." Varso's look of contempt shifted slightly, his eyes taking on a gleam of avarice. "I have heard you Elrics can do alchemy without an array, even a tattooed one. Tell me how you accomplish it," the alchemist demanded abruptly, "Depending on the answer, I may just let you live." The man's eyes were feverish pinpoints of darkness in his head. That, the desperation in his face, and the odd, erratic way he spoke only confirmed Al's impression that the man truly was something less than sane.

"_Tell me_!" Varso hissed, shoving the pistol brutally into the lieutenant's ear.

"Human sacrifice." Al gritted. His eyes were blurring in time with the throbbing in his head. But he only had to distract the man for a few more seconds…

The man threw him a puzzled look that flattened once again into arrogance. "I've already done _that_. There's no telling how many lives have gone into my work. But I have never accomplished such a thing."

Al's heart turned to lead, sinking cold and heavy into his guts. "You sacrificed people." He might have suspected it, but confirmation still chilled him to the bone. _Science and alchemy give insanity an irresistible scope._ His brother had said that, a decade and a world ago, and it sickened them both to be proven right over and over again. Behind him, there was a silence so complete it seemed to swallow sound. His team's horror was a palpable thing.

"Of course. Isn't that what you meant?"

"No. It wasn't." Al whispered. He kept bitter triumph from his face as the man edged closer, eyes bulging with greed. He was absolutely desperate to possess the Elric's famous method of instant transmutation. Indeed, what alchemist wouldn't be desperate to possess such a powerful gift?

Only those who already knew the cost.

"I sacrificed myself," Alphonse Elric finished softly. _Accidentally, for my mother. Unwittingly, for the Philosopher's Stone. Willingly, for my brother,_ he added silently.

The other alchemist stared at him, incredulous. "What do you—?"

It was in that moment Al struck, the instant when the man's attention focused completely on him. The armor suit had taken the brunt of the alchemic reaction and been blown into a far corner, out of the Aerugan's sight and—apparently—out of mind.

But not out of the lieutenant colonel's. An overlooked steel fist shot out of the shadows and wrenched the gun up and away from Klaus. The alchemist screeched and pulled the trigger, discharging the gun harmlessly into the ceiling. The armor batted him away from Klaus with one hand, giving the lieutenant a gentle push in Al's direction with the other. The Aerugan alchemist turned and lunged for the armor suit, exposing the twin arrays tattooed on his palms. The armor neatly avoided its attacker's hands, then grabbed the staggering alchemist by his wrists and hauled him off the floor. It stood stoically as its now-helpless burden kicked and screamed to his heart's content.

"Lieutenant, would you mind reaching into my coat pocket and pulling out a piece of chalk and the paper?" Al requested over the racket, wincing.

When Klaus had done this, Al picked the simplest array from one of the sheets of paper. "Now, draw that one once on the stone around my feet, and once by my arms." As she carefully did so, Al called back to the rest of his men. "Sergeant Connor, please make sure everyone's still breathing. Daniels, and Tocker if you're up, restrain our prisoner. If he keeps yelling, gag him." Al's head hurt enough as it was. Once Daniels had restrained the alchemist (he had fallen silent when Tocker took off his sock and offered it as a gag) and Tocker had his gun on him, the armor clanked over to Al and touched the arrays. Al dropped to the floor as the stone crumbled, his gray duster flaring out around him.

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

Klaus's salute was heartfelt. "Thank _you_, sir."

Al nodded back soberly before striding across the room to where Lieutenant Connor, the field medic for the group, was crouched over Lane. Hart was standing next to them clutching his arm, which was bleeding and hung limp at his side, seemingly broken. Wallace stood next to him, tearing strips from her uniform to fashion a sling at Connor's direction. Bell had been blown back through the entryway but was making his way over. All of them were cut around their knees and legs and lower torso where the ice had raked them, but their boots seemed to have largely protected their feet

Alphonse released a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding and raked a hand through his hair. They had all survived. He winced again as his adrenaline faded and the Central City Symphony began a long, percussive march inside his skull.

"How are we doing?" Al asked Connor, bending carefully. He had the unsettling feeling if he moved his head too sharply he would pass out on the floor.

"Not too bad, considering." The second lieutenant smiled tightly as he detailed the casualties. "Lane's seriously concussed, compound fracture on Hart's arm and maybe a fractured rib along with it. Bell's managing to limp over, so I guess he's fine. Most of us need stitches. Cuts and scrapes, mostly." He turned to the red-headed man coming up behind him. "How're you doing, buddy?"

Bell grimaced. "I came back down on my knees. They aren't real happy with me, but I'll live."

"Glad to hear it." Al chuckled before grimacing to match Bell. Connor caught the change and did a double take, squinting at him in the sickly light. "Sir, you need to let me look at you."

Al didn't need a mirror to know that he looked like he'd been through a meat grinder. He'd been near the epicenter when the array went off, and he and the armor had bore the brunt of its effect. The armor was only dinged and dented, as though it had stood out in a particularly bad hail storm. Al's face, on the other hand, was stiffening with blood and stung with cuts. The front and arms of his duster were in shreds, and he could feel where more icy shards had penetrated his clothing. "I'm all right. We need to look around and get out of here before someone comes to see what all the noise was about." He knew they were fortunate that reinforcements hadn't already shown up.

Connor looked at him consideringly, as though debating whether he could browbeat his commanding officer into getting seen to. His commanding officer saw the speculation in his eyes and gave him a flat look. "Don't make my head hurt more than it already does, Lieutenant."

Connor shrugged. If Al had been anyone else, the field medic would have instructed his fellow officers to sit on him. But a six-foot-two national alchemist was beyond his ability to bully.

"If you pass out, don't cry to me."

Al smiled wryly. "I'm sure I won't. Let's move."

It didn't take much to convince Varso to guide them to where the prisoners were kept, in isolated cells off a corridor of the main chamber. He seemed almost …eager, in fact. Al didn't like that one bit, and discreetly signaled his group to keep their guard up. He wasn't about to walk into another trap.

---

He could smell them before he saw them. The scent of blood, sweat and human waste grew stronger as they passed deeper into the dark. There was an added taint to the air, unwontedly familiar: the acrid bite of pain and fear. With a clap, Al deconstructed the door of every cell into emptiness and, one by one, the captive men stumbled out. One more aware than the others turned and peered at Al. "Lt. Colonel? Is that you?"

Al squinted through the dark, trying to match a name with the voice. "Badenmeyer? Major Badenmeyer?" He vaguely recalled the man, a pike-thin individual with nearly colorless hair and eyes. He and the major worked briefly together on an intelligence assignment in East City. His humorless, collected demeanor and doggedness in his work had reminded Alphonse of Farman. The man was also a sharp chess player; Al remembered barely scratching a draw during the lull before their reassignments.

It was hard to reconcile the seemingly unshakable officer with the wasted man before him. A sound that was almost a sob wrenched itself from the man's throat. "Thank God you came. Thank God. What they did to us…you can't imagine…" The dingy glow of a lamp caught one side of the major's face as he moved out of the shadows toward them, allowing Alphonse a stomach-twisting glimpse of what Varso had inflicted on his captives. Dark scales ran down one side of Badenmeyer's face and neck and continued beneath the ragged remains of his uniform. His eyes caught the lights and threw back an eerie red shine. Alphonse held the major's gaze, determined to see only the man behind the terrible violation. Grimly he thought: _We alchemists have so much to answer for…_

"It's all right, Major." Alphonse purposely mimicked the bracing tone Granny Pinako had used with her patients, trying to ground the other man and give him some purchase on the moment. "We're getting everyone out. Are these all of your men?"

"All of them that survived. Joels, Talc, Freeman, Mahler and Dovart were killed by the Aerugan's alchemist, along with Sergeant Held." The major recited the names in a dead voice, as though speaking drained what little energy remained to him. "Did you see the alchemist? He's dangerous, sir--"

"We captured him," Al informed the other man grimly, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

Badenmeyer stared past Al to the captured alchemist. When his altered eyes locked on the man he went utterly still, tense as a wire at its breaking point. A sound like the grinding of an avalanche rose from him, killing all other noise in the corridor.

Al moved first, blocking his prisoner from the major's view. "Badenmeyer, don't. Please."

The Major's eyes blazed, and his lipless mouth peeled back in a snarl full of overlarge teeth. "You'd defend him? After what he did? What he did to us? _Look at me!_ I'm not—I'm not even…." Badenmeyer wrenched his eyes from Al's to stare at the wall, visibly reining himself in. After a moment he turned back, slowly and deliberately, to face not Alphonse but the Aerugan. "Just look at us. He has to pay."

Looking at him, Al could hear Martel's shriek of hate as they confronted the Crimson Alchemist. The memory blended into Ed's cry of accusation when they had stumbled upon Shou Tucker and his most terrible work, his screams of denial when the alchemist compared his crime to their own. He could see the metal fist slamming into Tucker's face, over and over and over. He could see Martel lunging for Kimbley, the flash of her dagger nothing compared to her steel-hard intent. Badenmeyer's eyes held the same look as Ed and Martel; horror and pain had been the source of their rage, blinding them to everything but the fact that their tormentor was before them, and erasing him might mean erasing the pain...

Once again Al was standing between a man and murder, just as he had for Martel, just as he had for his brother, all those years ago.

He spoke gently, trying to cut through the other man's emotion and get him thinking again. "If he isn't interrogated, we'll never find out all of what went on here. We'll need that information to reverse the damage he did." They stared at each other for a tense moment, sober bronze eyes to night-shine red. If revenge had become more important to the man than a cure…

Suddenly Badenmeyer seemed to deflate. He broke the stare and looked back toward his group. After a tense moment he spoke coldly: "Yes sir."

"You!" Both Al and the major started as the captive alchemist abruptly shrilled at them from down the corridor. "Elric! Don't forget my masterpieces! You can't leave them here!"

"'Masterpieces." Al was horribly certain anything this man considered a masterpiece would fall into the category of things he never wanted to see.

"Yes! In that chamber there!" He thrust with his head toward a door at the opposite end. "If you were a _true_ alchemist, you'd understand their significance! They are my life's work! No one else could even _approach_ the genius it took to create them--"

"Tocker, gag him."

"Yes _sir_." Tocker removed his sock from his pocket and stuffed it in the alchemist's mouth with relish.

---------

Behind him, Al could hear and smell someone's most recent meal being heaved onto the concrete. He couldn't really blame them.

He had tried to brace for what they might find as they broke through the steel door. It hadn't helped much. Cries of shock and horror began as they came through the doors and were almost immediately stifled. They were soldiers, after all. The major's team made no sound at all, having faced the horror before them now head on…but Alphonse was the only one who would proceed any further into the room. In the center of the bunker, glass and metal tanks of yellowish preservative were bolted to the floor and backlit, displaying the terrible fruits of the madman's efforts. Al reached out to touch the curve of the glass, so cold it bit his fingers even through his gloves. Behind his hand, beneath the glass, what had been a little girl was suspended in viscous fluid, her wide blind eyes floating level with his own. Her pale hair drifted around her like a pall and her skin was stretched thin, as though it was barely adequate cover for her tiny, brittle bones. Crowning it all was the deformity that for Varso and his compatriots must have been the pinnacle of their work, their most brilliant achievement. In place of arms, twisted, pinion-covered limbs sprouted from her shoulders, looking for all the world like the wings of a half-plucked chicken. Mouth and eyes agape, she was like some sad and alien bird crushed and drowned in a rising tide. Every tank held a chimera that was much the same, more or less birdlike, all with the faces of children between ten and three years of age. Al looked at them, the shadows around his mouth and eyes etched deep into his face. The entire setting was eerily similar to the laboratory where the Sewing-Life Alchemist had betrayed him to the homunculus Sloth. There too dead half-children had been preserved, as empty and lifeless as the children before Al now. He wondered if he would have nightmares of this place, with his sons faces encased within the glass. _If they had lived, Brother's array might have made them human again. We came for them too late...just like Nina…_

_We'll never even know what their names were…_

A muffled sound caused Alphonse to turn, searching for the source. Behind him, the captured alchemist was laughing around his gag, his eyes full of a vicious, insane delight. Al felt his face harden as fury, having simmered since the discovery of the stolen children and the fate of the previous team, spilled over his control. His eyes shot to the armor suit that restrained the Aerugan alchemist in a wordless command. Answering, the armor trapped both of the man's hands in one fist and dragged him up before Alphonse with no more care than he would have afforded a sack of grain. The steel hand wasn't gentle as it ripped the gag out of its captive's mouth.

"What was your military's purpose here? Why did they want avian chimera?" Al rapped out before the other man had a chance to protest.

"Surely even an Amestrian alchemist could have figured it out by now--" the man began, sneering. He was cut off by when an armored hand closed on his throat.

Backlit by the sickly light, the Lieutenant Colonel's face was hooded by the pervading darkness, and the armor beside him seemed an extension of his shadow—a shadow with burning eyes. The grim, hollow voice that echoed around the chamber might have come from the steel or the man. "If I tell it to, that hand will close. Which do you prefer, a broken neck or asphyxiation?" Alphonse hardened himself to necessity, schooling his expression to be as implacable and cold as the fist closing around his captive's throat.

The Fullmetal Alchemist wasn't the only Elric who knew how to intimidate people.

And it worked. Varso's eyes darted to him, bulging with fear—"Soldiers! They wanted soldiers that could assault from the air!" He choked out, drooling in relief as the remorseless pressure withdrew. The Amestrian soldiers looked on as though they'd like nothing better than to take their turn at his neck. Al closed his eyes and stepped back, considering. It made a terrible sort of sense. Aerugo must have heard of the success of the aerial assault on Amestris during the war of the gate. Being metal poor, they had resorted to the materials at hand—namely, human lives. They had probably started by preying on enemy soldiers, until the weaker, unarmed children became too tempting a target…

"Colonel, look out!"

At Bell's shout, Al looked up. Within the shadow of the tanks, a darker shadow was inching toward him. It stopped when it felt Al's eyes on it, shrinking into itself. Al squinted at it. Was it _shivering?_ Something about its pose seemed very familiar…

A memory of his son Richard sobbing over a scraped knee let Al recognize what the figure was, and what it was doing. Al slowly crouched on one knee and spoke in the gentle tone reserved for injured animals and banishing nightmares. "Don't cry. It's all right. We're here to help. What's your name?" Alphonse questioned, hoping with all his might that he would be understood.

"I don't know." The voice was strangely high and fluid, its inflection that of a child no older than eight or nine. Bell lowered his rifle, mouth slack in dawning horror as the words echoed forlornly around the chamber.

"I don't know!" the voice sobbed again suddenly. It lunged forward—

And Al opened his arms. He rocked back as the figure crashed into him at full tilt, but he didn't fall, and he didn't let go of what flung its strange arms around him and sobbed in piping breaths. "It's going to be all right." Al whispered, praying it wasn't a lie. "You're going to be all right."

The creature crying into Al's shoulder was a little boy, or had been. Alchemy had stretched his upper limbs long enough to drag at his feet when not folded awkwardly at his sides. The muscles of his legs were overdeveloped, his feet ending in three-toed talons with another vestigial claw sprouting from each heel. Clawed thumbs arched out of the second joint counted from each shoulder, where hands would have been if he still possessed them, or from where the first five primary feathers would have joined a bird's wing. His body was covered in pale feathers, from short, fur-like tufts on his head to huge, fully developed flight feathers that made his upper limbs more wing than arm. His eyes were huge when he blinked up at Al's face, his pupils mere pinpricks even in the wan light. Al stroked the trembling head comfortingly, feeling feathery down under his hand. Sidling out of his torn duster, he knelt and wrapped it as well as he could around the child before lifting him into his arms. The boy tensed for a moment, then sighed and sagged into him. Alphonse felt his heart melt as the feathered arms reached gingerly around his neck.

_Please let us be able to save this one…_he prayed, though he wasn't sure to whom.

"Are there any others?" he addressed the alchemist flatly.

Varso stared back at him, his expression a sickening mix of jealousy and pride. "It's mine! I made it. _You can't have it_!"

The boy in Al's arms flinched at the Aerugan alchemist's voice and shuddered, his arms tightening around his rescuer's neck.

"He belongs to himself!" Al's clear, furious shout rang out, silencing the man. "_Answer_ me. Are there any others?"

The man glared at him a moment in sullen silence. Then he replied, "No. That is my best chimera, the only one that survived the transmutation process."

"Fine." Alphonse pitched his voice so that he could be heard by all. "We're moving out. My team, split between the front and the rear, Major Badenmeyer and his group in the middle." Al moved to the front with the suit of armor.

The alchemist it restrained bucked and frothed out, "No! Don't take my creation! It was a trap! They're coming, they're coming, and they'll destroy it when they kill you!"

_Damn._ Al thought bitterly. _I knew this was too easy…_"We've got incoming! Everyone, line up _now!_ Double formation! Tocker, Daniels, give the major's men your spare rifles. Lane and Hart, give them yours too and get in the middle. I want Klaus and Bell behind me, anyone else who can shoot in back." Al's eyes went to the burden in his arms. Unbidden, his mind summoned images of what a firefight could do to a small body…

"Here, sir. I'll take him." Lane held out his hands, no longer burdened with a rifle.

Al looked for any sign Lane's face that his concussion was slowing him down. Finding none, he handed the boy over to the sergeant. "If he's too much to carry--"

"I'll keep up." Lane hefted his burden. "Don't be such a worrywart, Lieutenant Colonel sir. Between the two of us, you'll not be winning the beauty pageants ahead of me. Unless they're modeling alchemists who fight grain-threshers with their faces, sir—" the sergeant flashed Alphonse his insufferable smirk as he hefted the boy. "—you'll take first prize in all of those."

Al smiled crookedly. "I'm pleased I'm not so hurt I can't hear your opinions, Sergeant."

"Always pleased to be alive enough to give 'em, sir."

The Soul Alchemist offered another grim smile in reply as he touched the steel door of the bunker. A minute later they were another suit of armor that joined the group at the rear, one more shield for his men. Alphonse hoped it would be enough. "Let's go."

The gruesome outer doors became three more suits of armor, and the battle was joined. With a cry of "Fire!" in Aerugan from some faceless enemy, the passage behind the entryway erupted with deadly metallic hail. The armor suits charged forward without hesitation, unaffected by the torrents of half-molten lead. Ricochets whined along the stone of the corridor, and cries of fear and pain echoed back to Al as the Aerugan's shots were repelled back into their mass. The opposing force split and retreated further down the corridor, laying down cover fire as they went.

Lieutenant Klaus was beside Al, shouting into over the roar of gunfire. "The corridor splits up ahead! They'll try to catch us in the crossfire!"

"Then we'll make out own way out!" The wall of armor defending them was just wide enough that Al could reach the wall without being exposed to gunfire. Suddenly there no longer was a wall, only empty air where it had receded into the floor.

A horrendous, grinding groan from the ceiling barely preceded Klaus's cry of "Sir! That was a load-bearing wall!"

"Too late now! Move!" Al yelled, directing his men toward the new exit. They surged through, the armor coming last and closing the gap behind him. Al had already bored a hole through the ceiling, with stone stairs punching up to the next chamber.

They were through the ceiling and halfway across the open gallery of the main cell block when gunfire erupted again, this time from overhead. One of his brother's more pungent oaths escaped his lips, but Alphonse didn't hesitate. With a blue flare, he condensed another wall of ice from the air to shield them, curving from the floor to arc over their heads. With a wall at their backs, fire from above was cut off from behind and thudded ineffectually into the ice in front. Fracture patterns formed where bullets struck, obscuring Al's view of the snipers. His conveniently transparent barrier wouldn't hold out much longer. Worse, his hands were starting to shake in exhaustion. Grafting several pieces of his soul at once was beginning to take its toll. "Klaus! Where's the northern wall?"

"Through here, sir!" the lieutenant called back, pointing to the wall at their back.

Al made a hole barely wide enough for them to pass in double file and ordered everyone through. Then his knees buckled. Klaus and Daniels saw him fall and just managed to get under his shoulders in time to keep his head off the stone. Between them he managed to stagger to his feet. A second later, a section of the ice shattered, letting the rain of bullets pour through. Bell screamed as he was caught without cover, collapsing like a string-cut marionette as a bullet ripped through his thigh. Face tight with pain Alphonse managed to turn, deaf to his lieutenant's shout of warning as he rallied the last dregs of his concentration. He _pushed_ with all his will…then one of the remaining suits of armor was before the young soldier, shielding him. _But that's not going to last…_Al watched as the tell-tale shudder ran through the metal figure, a sign that the soul-bind was failing. He couldn't trust it to take the strain of carrying Bell out…Al pushed Klaus and Daniels toward the gap and dashed headlong for the shelter of the armor's shadow. A glancing shot caught him along the shoulder, spinning him halfway around. Then he was at Bell's side.

"Lieutenant Colonel!" Klaus screamed. She and Daniels were starting after him.

"Stay _there_! That's an order!" Al bellowed back.

Exhausted as he was, hefting the unconscious man was more difficult than he had thought it would be. _Please, I'm so tired—no time for that, have to lift, LIFT—! _Al locked his legs and strained, by some miracle managing to get Bell over his shoulder. Another suit of armor took the place of its failing counterpart, retreating with them as Al staggered for the opening. Then they were through. Two of Badenmeyer's men took Bell between them, wrapping his leg, and Klaus was under his shoulder, supporting him. Daniels was right behind as they moved toward the wall, the last wall. The sight of it gave Al another needed spur of numbing adrenaline. He clapped and the wall was gone, and there were footsteps behind him—he touched the opposite wall then, and it was with grim satisfaction that he struck then, and saw the huge, ominous crack run like lightning through the wall, then beyond it. Alphonse was halting the alchemic process at deconstruction, much as Scar had done. The effect was just as devastating now, nearly twenty years after the State-Alchemist killer had died at Lior.

With a roar like thunder, the ceiling collapsed on their pursuers, but a rising, grinding shriek from above warned that the rest of the installation wasn't far behind. He staggered through the opening with Klaus and Daniels, then there was earth under his boots, and they were through the fence and into the trees.

Al stumbled against a root and fell sprawling, his weight carrying Klaus to the ground with him. He strained to rise, collapsed back to a knee as his vision wavered and his head spun. Daniels shouldered his rifle, and he and Klaus helped Al to his feet once again.

Alphonse was barely aware of eyes staring up at him worriedly. "He looks concussed, and he's bleeding from his head and shoulder. Klaus--"

" Just _go_. 'M _fine_," the lieutenant colonel slurred at them insistently, trying to shrug off their help. "Stop _worrying_, Ed." Daniels and Klaus traded anxious looks, both thinking _Just how hard was he hit…? _

Suddenly Lt. Colonel Elric's head whipped around. "Here comes the cavalry," he pronounced brightly. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he folded in a boneless heap. Klaus knelt over him, yelling into his face and finally slapping him, but it was useless. The Soul Alchemist was out cold.

She and Officer Daniels had managed to lift him halfway when they were suddenly relieved of his weight. They turned as a familiar voice came out of the dark behind them, making them both jump. A suit of armor had come back through the trees. "Sorry about that," it said, its tone sheepish. The two started again; neither officer had ever known the armors suits to speak without the colonel's direction. "Here, let me."

It hefted the unconscious man without effort. Daniels peered at it. It might have been his imagination, but the armor's movements seemed more human somehow, less stilted than before…the soldier shivered as an eerie thought occurred to him.

"Lieutenant Colonel, is that you in there?" he asked.

"Well, technically, it always was, but my control is better when I'm not conscious." The lieutenant colonel's voice replied hollowly. The huge steel form turned glowing eyes on its limp burden and seemed to shiver. "This is really weird. I've never carried _myself_ before." The Soul Alchemist's voice was somewhere between bemused and vaguely disturbed as he peered into his own face. "I didn't realize that array had torn me up so badly…" The glowing eyes shot up at the shouts filtering through the trees. "What am I doing?" The armor remarked abruptly. "RUN!"

Dodging branches and leaping tree roots, they plunged through the pre-dawn darkness, sprinting for their side of the border and safety.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist, obviously, so don't sue me. I'm a poor college student busily incurring a great deal of debt, so it'd be like squeezing blood from a stone, really.

Chapter 2: The Shadow of Steel

The camp seethed with activity as personnel scrambled to load supplies onto waiting trucks. Messengers dashed back and forth, relaying orders and getting under everyone's feet. The perimeter guards halted them at the checkpoint and sent them on. Outside the infirmary a few minutes later, they were intercepted by a harried-looking medic. He took in their assortment of cuts, slings and bruises, caught sight of the suit of armor...and the scales on Waldenmeyer's face. His eyes widened, and he started to move past the armor to the chimera when the steel body shifted to block his path. The man paled when it spoke, recognizing Colonel Elric's voice as he requested that Brigadier General Havoc be informed that his team would be in the infirmary. The medic led them into the tent without a word. Before he left he informed them that it would take some time to be debriefed or even seen to until the chaos of packing up died down.

So they waited. Connor unpacked some iodine and began tweezing ground-in shrapnel out of the more drastic cuts. The suit of armor lay the colonel's body down on one of the beds beside Bell, then assisted the second lieutenant mutely, bandaging the wounds and resetting Hart's broken arm. It didn't speak again, and its movements grew more and more stilted as the minutes ticked by. Connor hoped it was a sign that the colonel would soon awaken. Waldenmeyer and his men kept to a corner, all of them dozing except for major himself and the two other ranking officers. They sat hunched, staring at nothing, apparently lost in thought. The major only moved to wave Connor off when he offered to look them over. "We're fine. Your people bore the brunt of it. See to yourselves."

They all started when the armor finally shuddered and collapsed, the head rattling emptily into a corner. Connor stepped around Lane's cot and checked the Colonel's pulse, but there was no change. Walder peered inside the empty metal carapace and shivered. "Do you really think the Colonel lived like that for four years?"

Connor, who at thirty-seven was the oldest of the group, answered her. "I saw him and his brother in 1912. Everybody knew a suit of armor followed the Fullmetal Alchemist around, but the higher-ups were the only ones who knew the whole story, and only a few of them. And the Fullmetal himself didn't exactly invite questions on the subject. I had heard he had a hell of a temper for a little cuss."

Walder looked thoughtfully toward the bed the colonel occupied. "Connor, aren't you older than Colonel Elric? I mean, our Colonel Elric?"

"By seven years, yeah."

Walder could see that everyone else was doing the math as well. "But for the Fullmetal to be in service in 1912…"

Conner half-smiled at the realization dawning in the other faces around the room. "He couldn't have been more than fourteen. And our fearless leader was all of thirteen at the time."

"I wondered how he made Colonel so young." Hart was looking at the unconscious man as well. Sleeping, the colonel's face was barely lined, and gray had yet to touch his bronze hair. It was a gentle face, true to the Colonel's nature, but deceptive in that his experience hardly showed . . . unless his eyes were open. Then someone might catch a glimpse at the truth behind the rumor that surrounded the Elrics. The Colonel's eyes were older than they had any right to be. They peeled the myth away, and let one wonder if every whispered horror of his and his brother's legend was true . . .

Daniels's expression almost awed. "Did you see the way he went back for Bell?"

Klaus frowned from where she stood against the wall, arms folded. "It was foolish. He should have sent one of us back."

"It was brave!" Daniels insisted. Klaus's dark gaze bore into him, then flicked to Connor. "You explain," she directed.

The field medic sighed out a "Yes, ma'am", but pierced the rookie with a look as direct as the lieutenant's. "It _was_ brave. But the lieutenant is right. It was also _really_ stupid."

"But--" Daniels checked his tongue as Connor raised a hand.

"Look, kid. I've been around a while, and I've been passed through a lot of officers who were incompetent, wouldn't tolerate the fact that I spoke up when I thought they were wrong, who were cruel to their men or cowards. The Colonel's none of that, and I'm glad of it. I hope you're retired before you realize how lucky you were to get him right off the cadet lists. The man would die for any of us, and that's the truth."

He leaned in, staring the corporal in the eye. "But that's exactly what the danger is. The Colonel would do that, not expecting that we'd do the same, that if he gets hurt we have to help. Lose one of us, and the rest will probably get out of it alive, but lose _him—_" Connor made a slicing motion across his throat. "Command throws us all at things knowing what _he _can do. I wouldn't have given a used hanky for our chances in that bunker this morning if he'd gone down any earlier. And that's the other thing," he added, his dark eyes no longer on the rookie but on the still form occupying the furthest cot. "He can't stand us dying on him, any more than he can stand to kill." Connor said it softly, reading looks of realization and agreement in the faces of the senior officers.

Daniels frowned. "How is he supposed to stand it? What do you mean?"

Connor looked away to the colonel, then back at the senior officers. "You all remember when Redman and Stockbridge got killed." It wasn't a question. There was no doubting they remembered the men that Daniels and Tocker had joined the unit to replace, in body if not spirit.

"What happened?" Daniels asked. He and Tocker were looking around at the suddenly grim faces.

"Ambush. Not the Colonel's fault; some joker of a major general screwed us over by marching us straight into a line of Drachmar subversives hiding in a bog. The colonel put a wall between us and them, but Stocks and Klev were down before we even knew they were there."

Lane smiled bitterly into the silence. "I always told Stocky I'd outrank him one day. Never occurred to me his punching out would prove me right."

"And you all remember what happened with the Colonel after they died." Connor continued.

Lane laughed, the shadow over his face lifting somewhat. "You punched him."

Daniels and Tocker gaped. "You _punched_ him?"

Connor narrowed his eyes at the snickering sergeant. "I'm trying to make a point to the rookie, you ass. I punched the colonel to snap him out of the week-long spell when he barely ate and only talked when he had to."

Daniels and Tocker's eyes widened. They weren't the only ones.

"He stopped eating over that?" Hart asked, aghast.

"I never knew that." Walder looked just as taken aback.

"I knew." Lieutenant Klaus informed them softly. "All the orders, all the planning was as sharp as before. I think he was desperate to keep us all safe after that. But outside of duty he stayed away from everyone, including us. The Brigadier General tried talking to him, but it didn't help."

"Even punching him didn't bring him out of it." Connor remembered, the barest hint of a smile playing on his face. "So I got desperate and called his brother."

"His _brother?_" Tocker spluttered. "The _Fullmetal Alchemist_. You just called him up out of the blue." Even Klaus was looking at him in surprise, and perhaps approval.

Connor grinned, his audience letting him warm into the story. "Pretty much. I got his number from some pencil pusher I know at Central. The number went to the lab closest to where he was on the southern border, so it took him two days to get back to me. At first I thought he was the dead opposite of the Colonel. Rude cuss. I didn't even tell him my name before he cut me off to ask what the hell I wanted. But he went quiet when I said it was about the Colonel." Connor knew Elric had thought he had called to report his brother's injury or death, which was usually what calls from anonymous servicemen meant. The relief had been strong in the alchemist's voice when he thanked him and hung up. "He was on the Drachmar border by two in the morning, three days later. Must've driven like a bat out of hell to get there." Connor laughed, recalling it. "He wasn't what I expected at all."

"What do you mean?" Tocker had leaned forward, intent on Connor's tale.

The second lieutenant grinned. "Well, you know how all those dime novels describe him. You know, all flawlessly heroic, cleft chin, dashing smile, long golden hair, eyes that make women swoon--" Connor batted his own at Walder and ducked the bed pillow she threw at him. "All that crap. Plus, his voice was deeper than the Colonel's, so I thought he'd be the taller of the two." The others looked askance at him when he started laughing before he explained precisely why the story was so hilarious.

"So here I am, it's two fifteen in the morning and I'm waiting up to see the "human weapon" out of Amestrian dime-store legend, who called an hour before to tell Havoc that they have to keep this on the down-low, because no one's realized yet that he's gone AWOL in order to get up there. Best conversation I ever had the pleasure of overhearing. You should have heard the Brigadier General swear when he got off the phone. But then he looks at me--" Here Connor mimed the Brigadier General's long jaw, set in a grim line. "—and he goes, 'You heard the little cuss. Make sure nobody sees him when you escort him to Colonel Elric.'"

"I can't believe the higher-ups would tie themselves in so many knots for this guy, even if he is a war hero." Hart shook his head as the rest laughed.

Connor smirked in reply. "It gets better. So I'm waiting outside to escort this guy and someone in civvies walks up and asks where the hell Havoc is. Doesn't add the rank or the sir, which should have told me something right then, but it's two in the morning, remember, and I've been up since four the day before. So my brain sees the clothes and thinks 'this fucking civilian is trying to push past me', so I unsling my rifle and tell him to state his fucking business and who the fuck he is."

Walder's expression was somewhere between laughter and horror. "You didn't."

"I sure did. Next thing I know there's a flash, my rifle muzzle suddenly looks like a bowtie, and this guy who barely comes up to my chin--" Connor held out his hand to indicate the man's height—"has yanked me down so I'm face to face with these mean, bloodshot, _yellow _eyes. Then the guy snarls right in my face, 'I'm Edward fucking Elric, and my fucking business is none of yours.'"

Connor laughed just as heartily as everyone else despite the joke being at his expense. Even Waldenmeyer's men joined in. He wiped his eyes and kept going, raising his voice over the roar of laughter, catcalls and cheering. "He says that and I finally figure out it's the same voice I heard over the phone three days ago. _Only_ then do I realize I've nearly assaulted Edward Elric, legend in the flesh and steel."

"He only came up to your _chin_?" Daniels looked torn between laughter and incredulousness, as though trying to decide whether Connor and the others were having a joke at his expense.

"Swear to God, may I be drowned in the cafeteria tapioca if I lie." Connor assured him, chortling. "He didn't look real heroic, either. He looked more like a guy that had driven for three days straight. Walder, you'll have to tell me whether bloodshot eyes make you swoon, 'cause they don't do much for me." He ducked another flying object and continued. "So I led him to the Colonel, they talked, and the Fullmetal Alchemist left before dawn."

"You didn't hear what he said?" Tocker asked, disappointed. Connor could tell the rookie wanted to redeem the hero whose image had been soiled by his portrayal of a foul-mouthed midget.

Connor gave him a direct look. "I did. They didn't dismiss me, so I stuck around. Elric told the Colonel…exactly what he needed to hear." His tone was final, stating clearly that he had said all he meant to. Daniel and Tocker looked like five year olds who had just had their candy snatched away. Seeing their disappointment, Connor added, "I will say this. There was enough in what he said to tell me that anyone who says he was responsible for Lior doesn't know shit from steak at the _Alabaster_." He knew that would brighten Tocker up at least. Any time a debate turned to Lior (which it never did if Colonel Elric was present), Tocker always jumped to the Elrics' defense.

"How do you know?" Hart questioned. He was one of the skeptics who maintained that the Lior disaster might have been caused by a state alchemist, though there was no proving it unless and until the military gave them up.

"Because, and I want you to understand what I'm saying, the older Elric is _exactly_ like our fearless leader at heart. He just hides it better. The Colonel couldn't have managed killing our own people at Lior. Hell, you've seen him, he never even kills _foreign_ soldiers." Connor watched as Hart's skeptical look softened into thoughtfulness. "Him and his brother, judging from what I heard then and what I've heard around, take every risky task they're handed to keep other people out of harm's way."

"Whatever they said could have just been for your benefit." Hart shrugged defensively with the shoulder that wasn't bandaged as everyone looked at him. "I'm just saying."

Connor snorted. "Then it was the best spun, most eloquent piece of bullshit I've ever heard, and the Elric brothers could put any film star to shame."

The tread of boots snapped the group out of their debate, and a man's voice filtered through the canvas divider. "Your patient's through here, doctor." A hand pulled the canvas aside, and a woman in a blue medic's coat walked through.

Connor had to look twice to get his brain to register past the uniform and her insignia of a major. The woman was _beautiful_. Not in a classic way; the eyes were slightly too tilted, her straight nose a bit long, her skin a dusky olive. But her eyes were cinnamon-brown and warm with laughter, her lips were full, and her nose balanced a well-boned face positively crammed with character. _This one's a spitfire_, Connor thought as his eyes made the customary dance to her hands, checking for a wedding band. _Wonder if she's lonely…_His speculation broke off as he caught a gold glint on her hand. Seeing the ring, he sighed mentally, tipping some faceless man a rueful salute. _Hope the bastard knows how lucky he is._ He wondered idly if he knew the bastard in question; that ring looked familiar…

His attention was so focused on the woman that it took a moment to realize Brigadier General Havoc had been the one to escort her into the tent. Everyone able to do so shot to their feet and saluted. Lane saluted from his cot, a jaunty, lady-killer smile already in place. "General Havoc sir, thank you for sending the most beautiful nurse in the service. I'll be sure to name one of our children after you."

The brigadier general blinked at him. Connor put a hand over his face. _Lane, you ass…_He had just managed to place the ring that matched the medic's.

The brigadier general looked from Lane to the woman, fighting to keep a straight face and failing miserably. The medic lifted one cool, dark brow at the sergeant's winning smile. When she spoke, her voice was rich with amusement and an Eastern accent. "_I _don't have a say in this?"

"Nope." Lane looked as dashing as Connor supposed was possible on a military cot with a bandage around your head. The second lieutenant caught Klaus and Walder rolling their eyes in unison. They knew. Lane was about to be shot down in the flaming wreckage of his ego, and he would never see it coming.

"What about my husband?" One lovely hand displayed the band, braided with three shades of gold.

"A husband that doesn't follow wherever you choose to go clearly has no concept of how he couldn't possibly deserve you." Lane returned gallantly.

The brigadier general choked, unlit cigarette flying out of his mouth. Lane pointedly ignored him.

The woman only smiled. "Perhaps. But before you explain why you are so much worthier, I have to see my patient." She padded to the bed where Colonel Elric lay. His head was turned toward them, so that they could see his face had relaxed enough to have fallen into true sleep. She laid light fingers on his wrist, checking his pulse, then pulled back the dressing on his forehead and frowned. "How did he get this?" she addressed the room.

Klaus spoke up. "Ma'am, a chunk of flying ice made that cut."

The medic's fingers probed the colonel's head gently. "I thought it had to have been a rock. It fractured his skull for him. I need new bandages, please."

Connor tripped over Lane as the other man charged to bring a handful to her. Connor rolled his eyes at the sergeant's muttered "I saw her_ first_" and laid his share of the bandages on the tray. "How could you tell his skull was fractured just by touching it?" he asked.

The woman gave him a brilliant smile. "Because I am an alchemist as well." A needle flashed, pricking one long finger. When the blood welled, she drew a tangled circle around the wound. She laid two fingers on it and smiled as it flared with green-gold light. When the glow died, the cut was still there, but it was no longer so deep or broad, and blood no longer welled from it.

"You didn't seal the cut so that oxygen is allowed kill the bacteria?"

She looked at him interestedly. "That's right. Are you a medic?"

"Field medic assigned to Colonel Elric. I would have dressed that wound sooner, but in my defense, the only way to sew up the colonel is if he lets you. Big stoic." Connor added with affectionate disgust. He ignored Lane's elbow jabbing him the ribs.

The lovely brown eyes had turned back to the colonel. She sat down lightly on the edge of his bed, then reached out and ran gentle fingers through his hair, leaning over so that they were nearly nose to nose, her own long tresses falling over her shoulder in a dark, rippling curtain. Out of the corner of his eye, Connor could see Lane's face contorting in all manner of interesting expressions.

"Mmmm." Eyes still closed, the colonel sighed and turned his face into her hand.

"Good morning, love," she whispered, though not soft enough that Lane and Connor couldn't hear her clearly. Connor thought he saw a dark eye flick wickedly in Lane's direction.

Al's eyes flickered open to a face that was beautiful in its familiarity as well as its form. "Hey there," he said softly. Oblivious to his audience, he pushed himself to his elbows, and warm lips leaned down to meet him.

Connor had been watching Lane when the colonel got kissed, so he knew the exact moment comprehension brought its hammer down on the man's skull. He hadn't known the sergeant could blush like that, and his groan of embarrassment made both the colonel and the doctor turn. When she did, the gold name tag that had been concealed by a lapel became visible, emblazoned with the letters"_A. Elric_." The colonel's left hand rested on the medic's shoulder, allowing a good view of a ring that was a larger duplicate of the one she had flashed. Lane threw an arm across his eyes, grimacing melodramatically. "I humbly request that someone shoot me. Klaus, Connor, I know you love me. Kill me."

Connor grinned cheerfully and raised his hand. "Colonel Elric sir, I volunteer to put the sergeant out of our misery."

Once Al was updated on the situation, Havoc filed everyone out, saying that he would request Al's report after the main group rejoined General Raven. Once the room was empty, Al's eyes went back to Arelana. A grin blazed to life in his face as he swept his wife into his arms and spun. "I didn't know you were coming!" he crowed, artlessly happy.

Lana waited until he had set her down and kissed her soundly to reply. "Didn't you get my letter?"

Her husband grinned sheepishly. "I didn't have time before the raid. I like to read them when no one's around."

"Dope." Lana smiled up at him and rapped the back of her hand against his arm. Al caught the hand and brought it to his lips. "So, why _are_ you here?" he said, smiling against her fingers.

Lana gave him a regretful look that warned whatever she said next was sure to break the mood. "Well, officially, my unit is here to help evacuate the wounded from the border. Unofficially…" She leaned over and whispered into his ear. "There was a message an hour ago that they wanted me, specifically, because there was the possibility of chimera." His wife leaned back and frowned thoughtfully. "Though how they think I could be more expert than you or your brother is beyond me."

Al's playful mood was smothered as his thoughts turned to the Aerugan alchemist and his "progeny". Lana looked at him concernedly as his face folded. "What happened? You didn't find any, did you?"

"We did. We brought him…back…." Lana watched her husband's bronze eyes widen in alarm. "Oh, _no._ I can't believe I forgot about him!" His face twisted as berated himself under his breath, casting around for his boots and cloak. He jammed it all on and rushed for the door, snagging his wife's hand as he passed. "Come on!"

They found his team in the middle of debriefing two tents away. Normally respectful of protocol, Al bulled into the tent in a manner that reminded Lana strongly of her brother-in-law. "Lane! What happened to the boy?"

Startled, the sergeant who had been hitting on her in the infirmary leapt to his feet. "Sir! The medical staff took him off my hands when we arrived. They may have put him with the other children."

Al didn't take the time to reply. He whirled them both around and plunged back out of the tent.

Despite the glow of predawn, visibility was terrible as they ran through the haze of mud and rain. It was Arelana who spotted the small figures being loaded into two medical vans. Al skidded to a halt in front of one man in a white field-surgeon's uniform and flashed his silver watch. "I'm Alphonse Elric. This is Arelana Elric, the Healing Alchemist. Where are these children are being taken?"

The medic saluted but left his hand in place to shield his glasses from the rain. "Sir, I was instructed by Brigadier General Havoc to take them to the Army Hospital at Central. He insisted that we be among the first out." The man added pointedly

"I'm sorry, but this won't take a minute," Al replied, preoccupied with searching the ragged knot of children for a pair of golden eyes. Puzzled at lapse of activity, the huddle of children in the truck peered out the rear doors. Then one of them spotted the figure in the tattered gray cloak and crowed in a piping voice, "It's the man with the lightning! The Light Man, look! Look, you guys! He came back!" The horde leapt past the startled medics and barreled into an equally startled Al. They cheered and laughed, dancing with their hands in held up to the rain, reaching for his cloak, his hands, anything they could touch. Al looked around helplessly from where he stood, knee-deep in a veritable sea of humanity. Lana caught his expression and laughed, but her eyes were bright with pride.

"He isn't here?" she asked, meaning the chimera. Alphonse was still peering around frantically. "I can't see him. Hey guys--" Al addressed his following. "Did you see a boy with dark gold eyes, sort of like mine? He looks a little…different from you." he finished lamely.

The children thought it over, murmuring amongst themselves. Then a girl's voice piped from somewhere in the morass. "Mr. Al! I saw a boy in a blanket. I think he had gold eyes. A man took him away."

Al felt his heart plunge as though the ground had fallen out from under him. "Is that you, Kaila? Which way did they go?"

"Over there." She pointed down the row of trucks awaiting their load of men or equipment. "Want me to show you?"

"Yes, please. We have to hurry." Al turned to the medics and stabbed a finger at the one in glasses. "You're coming with us. You--" he said grimly, pointing to the other. "You will watch these children in the meantime. This truck doesn't move until I get back, are we clear?"

"But--" Any protest the man might have made died when he caught the look on Al's face. "Yes sir."

------------------------------------------------

Alphonse came around one armored van and nearly walked into the muzzle of a rifle. Kaila looked up when he stopped, freezing when she saw the gun. Like Al, Arelana started but recovered quickly, her eyes narrowing. "Pointing a gun at superior officer can earn you five years in prison." She said it coolly, her level gaze never leaving the man's face. "Pointing it at my husband can get you killed." He quiet voice was low and loaded with deadly promise. "Lower the rifle, captain, and explain yourself."

"No need." A man stepped from behind the truck. He stopped two feet away from Alphonse and addressed the taller man's collarbone. "I am Acting Colonel Reeves. I apologize for Captain Welk. He was instructed to guard the cargo."

Alphonse addressed the man in a clipped voice. "Your cargo is what, and headed where?"

The officer smiled thinly. "That would be top secret information."

Al's eyes narrowed. "Not secret from me. I'm Colonel Alphonse Elric. My team brought the chimera in. I want to know where you're taking it."

The man's face didn't move, but Al felt that behind his eyes the thin smile had grown a little wider. "I know of no chimera. Sir."

Al's mouth twisted. "Who's your superior?"

"I answer to General Grumman. Sir." The honorific was lagged deliberately as the man attempted to antagonize him. "Perhaps you've heard of him."

Al kept the concern from his face at hearing the man drop the name of that particular general. _What does Internal Affairs want with a chimera...?_

"Internal Affairs has no jurisdiction over a human chimera." he informed Reeves, merely to see the formalities out of the way. Al wasn't about to let the truck leave with its living cargo still aboard, and the only one who didn't know it was the pompous little man in front of him. Keeping a tight rein on his temper, Al addressed Reeves once more in his most patient tone. "I ask that you release him into my custody."

The acting colonel finally abandoned his pretense of ignorance. He turned a cold eye up at Al, obviously trying to cow the taller man. He looked away when he just as obviously failed to do so. "Our orders come from the Major General. You have no authority to countermand them." He recited the words to Al's chest as though he had learned them by rote. "Get out of our way." Behind him, several rifles cocked.

Al sighed resignedly and clapped his hands, then turned back to Reeves. "I suggest that your men not shoot. I just changed the composition of the air you're standing in to pure oxygen. Any friction could cause a flame that would incinerate you in seconds. That includes a spark of static electricity, so if I were you, Acting Colonel, I wouldn't move." The entire detachment froze. The acting colonel glared at him weakly. "You're lying. You wouldn't _dare_."

Al smiled grimly, all tooth and no cheer. "Just remember, I warned you." He walked away from the sputtering man.

"You can't do this," The acting colonel spat viciously. He craned his neck to follow Al's retreating back, but otherwise made no move to follow. His men were being very careful to remain absolutely still. "There will be repercussions, I promise you."

"There always are," Al's voice returned from inside the truck. There was a flash of blue light from the interior, a squealing cry, and he emerged again with a small, blanket-swathed form braced against his shoulder. As his feet met ground again Lana's slim hand touched his shoulder, lending more than physical support. The look he turned on her was heavy with memory. "There always are," he repeated softly. Then, louder—"Let's go."

**Author's Note:** Wheee! Two chapters posted. My homework is weeping from neglect (I'm a terrible, irresponsible person. It's a lot of fun, really). Don't go away, Ed fans, our favorite frenetic blond pipsqueak is coming up in the next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Small Price

Edward Elric cracked one eye as he heard the bedroom door creak open--and shut it immediately at the bright morning sun filtering through the window flooded his bleary vision with unwelcome glare.

"Winry?" he muttered.

The warm weight under his left arm shifted slightly, murmuring. Having affirmed all was right with the world, Ed heaved a sigh, closed both eyes tightly and burrowed further into his wife's hair.

He had almost managed to nod off again when he heard a soft pattering noise. Ed resisted the urge to groan. It sounded quite a bit like small feet creeping stealthily across his bedroom floor, despite the fact that small feet had no business in his bedroom so early in the day.

Fortunately, he had enough experience with the phenomenon that he didn't start when a hand patted at his face. Ed merely closed his eyes tighter and prayed that the early morning apparition would take the hint and make itself scarce for another ten minutes…

Now little fingers were trying to pry his eyes open. "Dad?" a voice whispered. _Of course she's whispering_, Ed thought ruefully. _She learned early on that Daddy's the one who'll put up with this kind of nonsense. Not to mention that NOTHING short of an earthquake, a flood, and an act of God wrapped up together had better wake her mother before seven in the morning_…

The hands were getting more insistent, tugging at his hair and shoulder.

"Tri-shaaa," Edward moaned pitifully into the back of Winry's neck. "It's too early for this."

His daughter didn't acknowledge the simple truth of his statement. In fact, she seemed to take her father's semi-coherent groan as encouragement. Trisha hooked both hands around his arm, braced her feet against the bed frame and heaved at her recalcitrant father, trying to roll him over.

"You said…urg!...that we…unh!...were going on the train!…meh! Today!"

"I said today, Tri, not at the crack of dawn." Ed, refusing to be moved, was still speaking to the back of his wife's head.

"Wha…?" The movement from Edward being shaken by the nine-year-old had finally woken Winry.

"Your daughter's trying to haul me out of bed," Ed growled in her ear. "Despite the fact that I slaved for three weeks at East City just so I could get _back_ to this bed. At the hands of General Bastard, no less."

"_My _daughter? Are you shirking your responsibility in this just a little bit?" Winry shot back sleepily. "Are the other two mine, too? Or are you trading her for them?"

"Anything that wakes me up this early is _completely_ your fault."

"Uh-huh. How come?"

"Dunno. Wasn't it in the wedding vows somewhere…?"

"Mom-_my_." Trisha was appealing to the higher power. "Make Dad get up."

"Win-ryyyy." Ed locked both arms around his wife, using her as an anchor against the small body throwing itself backward against his weight. "Make your daughter get out of my room."

Winry only chuckled and pried at her husband arms. Edward, believing he sensed a reprieve, relaxed his grip…and was caught utterly by surprise when his wife gave him a sudden hard shove toward the edge of the bed. His daughter gave an especially hard yank on his arm at the same time, and their combined efforts achieved what Trisha alone could not. With a squawk, Edward flailed and fell sprawling onto the floor.

"Ow…" Ed looked up into two pairs of eyes, one an anxious gold, the other a pitiless sky blue.

"You heard your daughter, alchemy freak. Go get dressed."

He growled in response and stood up, rubbing at his bruised backside.

"You okay, Daddy?"

"Peachy." Winry was already snoring. Ed toyed with the idea of grabbing the blankets and yanking his wife off the bed…but only for a moment. Winry's wrench wasn't anywhere to be seen, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be introduced to his head within thirty seconds of his wife hitting the floor.

"Go get dressed, Tri. I guess we'll take the early train."

Cheering, his daughter pounded out of the room.

---------

An hour later they arrived at the station, just barely in time.

Most of that hour had been spent prying four-year-old Alfons Nikola and a pouting, stubborn William off their father's legs so he could actually move out of the door. Both the four- and the seven-year-old were resentful at Trisha's being allowed to go on a trip with their father while they stayed at home. The fuss woke up Al's six-year-old twins, who were staying with their aunt and uncle while their parents were out in the field. With a teary wail of "Please don't go too, Uncle Ed!" Louis and Richard added their weight to the assault.

Winry hadn't been any help at all. When the four younger children heard the door open downstairs (Edward had no idea how; he always tried to sneak out of the house without a fuss, but the kids had ears like bats) they all came barreling down and commenced pleading and whimpering to come along. And there was Winry, standing at the kitchen door, giggling and snapping pictures while Ed alternated between prying children from his boots and shaking his fist at his wife.

Trisha, on the other hand, _had_ attempted to help by prying Niko off. That is, she tried to, but her little brother only whimpered and released one hand to snag her braid in his strong little fist. At this point Ed's patience, never extensive at 7:30 in the morning, wore thin. He started out the door, dragging the entire mass of squalling humanity with him.

They hung on grimly all the way to the road, the twins attached to his arms and William clinging like a burr to his left leg, forcing Ed to swing the limb like an awkward egg-beater to avoid braining the boy against the opposite knee. Niko brought up the rear, content to be dragged along on his behind by his father's coat hem. Still firmly attached to his fist was a pleading, scolding Trisha, walking bent nearly in half so that her little brother wouldn't snatch her bald.

Rounding out the impromptu Elric family circus was their audience. The inhabitants of Riesembul, being mostly small farmers, usually rose before dawn. Therefore most of the neighbors were awake to see Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist and hometown hero, trudge by them with his own and his brother's progeny in tow.

Some of the women, (particularly Nelly, who had a large brood of her own) gave Ed commiserating looks as he passed.

Everyone else paid their respects by laughing themselves sick at the sight of him.

Eventually the three cups of coffee Ed had downed kicked in and granted him access to his sleep-numbed brain.

"If the whole lot of you don't let go and go home RIGHT NOW, I am going to alchemize ALL of your desserts into BROCCOLI for as long as you LIVE." The menace in his voice promised they might not have to endure the dreaded vegetable for very long.

Within a few minutes, the only sign of the boys were four dust trails on the horizon.

It was amazing, Ed marveled, how children complied with one's wishes when properly motivated.

They made good time after that, but he still had to sprint the last mile with Trisha on his back and a suitcase under each arm.

He dashed up to the ticket booth, gasped out "Two tickets", picked them up with his teeth and sprinted for the train. An amused conductor, long used to the sight of Ed's headlong dashes for the eight o' clock to Central, obligingly punched the tickets without removing them from Ed's mouth.

Edward skidded to a halt at the closest alcove, puffing, and leaned back so Trisha could slide off onto the seat. He heaved the suitcases onto the overhead rack, then flopped down next his daughter.

"Rehhhh." Edward sighed and sagged back, closing his eyes.

"Either you're getting too big, or I'm getting too old for this."

"You're not old, Dad!" Trisha stated indignantly.

Ed chuckled, putting his arm around her. "Thanks, Tri."

His daughter leaned into his side, and he brushed her fine, golden hair out of her face. His eyelids were already at half-mast, and he was hoping to nod off once the train started moving.

With one last cry of the whistle and the squeal of metal against metal, the train lurched forward. Not anticipating the sharp movement, Trisha would've flown head-first out of her seat but for her father's vast experience of train departures and his reflexive grab for her collar as she went shooting forward. He chuckled quietly as he pulled her back onto the bench.

His daughter's coat was the same that he had worn and Al had worn in his turn during their adventures all those years ago. True, Al hadn't been able to wear it long (much to Ed's chagrin, his brother had managed to outgrow it much faster than he himself had), but it had been kept safe and lovingly repaired, a tangible piece of their travels in both worlds.

It had been Trisha's favorite thing to sleep with until she'd been barely big enough to wear it (Winry had finally gotten tired of the way it dragged on the floor, and asked Arelana to hem it), and after that had worn it as often as she could.

From the time she could talk, Trisha had been demanding stories about her father's and uncle's adventures. _And she was always so infernally easy to talk to_, Ed thought wryly, _taking it all in with those big, knowing eyes._ Ed reflected that he'd told his daughter things when she was five that Winry had had to pry at him for years to know.

It was unfair of him, he knew, born of the fact that Ed saw a lot of himself in his daughter. He knew their bond would be strong, even when she was grown.

Her eyes were what gave it away. Gold as his own, wide-set and curious, they were eyes that always sought to _understand,_ eyes that always asked _why_.

_Strong eyes that look like they're gazing off into the distance…_ He smiled quietly to himself.

Edward's duster, on the other hand, had been a present from Winry in the same year he and Al had finally returned home once and for all.

The new cloak was a more sober red than the old one, made with tough, mid-weight duck for the outer layer and with soft black flannel lining the inside. It was a good weight, and suited all five-foot-six of Edward perfectly. The Flamel was emblazoned in black on the back and the left shoulder. Al had received one as well, its only differences being that the outer fabric was a soft gray (not to mention longer; Al had managed to top Ed in the end by a good six inches).

They were vast improvements over the old jacket. Winry showed them how both coats had a high collar and a hood that could be attached or detached by black, stylized steel catches no wider than Ed's thumb. The lining could be unbuttoned and discarded in warm weather. The last two inches of both hems were sown all the way around with tough-yet-supple black leather to discourage fraying. There were several large, well-concealed pockets both inside and out. The dusters were tough enough to wear in all weather, but the fabric was of good enough quality that the brothers could (and did) wear them for military functions.

Edward and Alphonse had been amazed by the craft and detail in them. It was as though Winry had committed every random complaint Ed had ever made about the cloak to memory and improved on all of them.

"_Is it alright?"_ Edward remembered her asking when the brothers had had time to look their gifts over. She had been half afraid of encroaching on something that was to be shared only between them. Both brothers had eyed at each other, grinning, then looked back at Winry and declared in unison, _"It's perfect."_

Winry had been very relieved, and had gone on and on about how gray brought out Al's eyes, then commented slyly that now at least people would see Ed coming, as he was still just a bit on the short side. That got a rise out of him as she had known it would.

What Winry hadn't known was that Ed had caught the sudden gleam of tears in her eyes, and had carried on deliberately so she could recover before Al noticed.

Later that night she told him that to her the coat had been a reassurance. When they had worn it, he and his brother had always come back home.

"_I know it's stupid. But I know you can't leave the military, at least not yet, and I wanted to…I can't go with you, but I want to _be_ with you…and you always came back when you two had that coat…_ _I guess I'm not making any sense…"_ She had laughed a little, not looking at him.

Ed had taken her chin in his hand, lifted her eyes so that the starlight over Riesembul picked out her tears, shining like seed diamonds in her pale lashes. _"You do. I'm not going anywhere, Winry. _

He had held her, rocked her, his own eyes brimming.

"_Not ever again."_

He swore then that he would wear that damn coat everywhere.

Edward's daughter shifted against him, bringing him out of his half-doze.

"Dad?"

"Mm?"

"What's this?" When Trisha moved her head, something hard had stirred inside her father's duster. She patted the spot curiously, and the something gave a muffled clunk against the shoulder plate of his automail.

"Just pictures."

"Pictures? Can I see?"

Edward shrugged carelessly. He groped inside his cloak pocket and brought out a scratched and dented steel case, which he passed to Trisha. The case had done time as a military-issue canteen before Edward alchemized it to suit its new purpose. His daughter pried at it with her finger nails until the lid gave a "pop!" and went skittering into a corner of the compartment. She lifted out the first one, and Ed leaned in for a look as well.

The first picture was of Winry, holding a very new, very wide-eyed baby. Ed didn't have to look at the date on the back to know which infant this had been. Only one of their children had opened her eyes and actually stared around avidly when she was born.

"Who's this?"

"That's you and your mom. The doctor was very impressed that you could focus on things when you were so new. Most babies can't."

His daughter grinned and hauled out the next one. "I know who _this_ is!" she crowed.

Ed grinned too. The picture in question was one of him sprawled across the sofa, limbs dangling off the side, snoring with a book over his eyes and his mouth wide open. Sprawled belly-down and boneless across his father's chest was a two-year-old Niko, his mouth open just as wide as Ed's.

The next photograph was the only one of both Elric brothers together with all the kids save Niko. Ed remembered the day very clearly. It had been in the aftermath of the Great Bug Zapping Incident (as Al had termed it), when it was decided that all the Elric children were going to receive alchemy lessons twice in a week that either their father or their uncle was home. When school was on break, lessons were stepped up to every day at least one brother was around.

The short version of the Incident was that Ed had caught five-year-old Trisha doing alchemy outside in the dirt while four-year-old William looked on. That in itself wasn't so bad, despite the fact that Ed strongly discouraged his brood from using alchemy when he or Al wasn't around to supervise (Trisha especially was guilty of this; it was one of the few instances where Ed profoundly wished his daughter weren't so like him).

The bad part was that they had been using one of their father's arrays to blow up ants.

That was the only time Edward had ever taken a hand to his children. Once he realized what his son and daughter were so intent on, he'd collared both of them with his automail hand, laid them across his knee, and whacked them each once, _hard_, with the flesh and blood hand.

It was over almost before the kids had registered what had happened.

They certainly didn't have time to cry. Their father set them immediately in the dirt and explained to them that the pain in their backsides wasn't a trillionth of what the ants had felt. Edward grimly proceeded to tell them in graphic detail just how that array broke organic matter apart, shredding molecules into their component elements. Edward kept all of his notebooks under lock and key when they weren't in use, which meant that Trisha had once again alchemized her way past whatever barriers he divised. The purpose of the array she had obsconded with was to keep the household drains from clogging.

By the time he'd finished his explanation, both children were pale and round-eyed. Will had started to cry. Trisha was dry-eyed but shaking, staring at the ground, eyes refusing to stray anywhere near the array.

"Trisha, _look_." Edward commanded, then lay his automail hand across the array.

His daughter only had time to emit a strangled yelp before the array went off.

Then Edward lifted his steel hand out of the cloud of vapor, blackened but intact.

_Now_ he yelled. "What if William had put his hand in the array? What if _you_ had? Do you know what that would do to me and your mother? How you'd feel if one of your cousins or your friends stepped on this by mistake?"

Trisha couldn't pull her eyes away from her father's smoking prosthetic hand.

William was bawling in earnest now, and suddenly Trisha's face crumpled and she was crying too, hugging her brother and sobbing "I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to!" over and over.

Edward closed his eyes, hurting at what he'd done, and that doing it had been necessary. He had gathered his sobbing children in and held them silently while they cried themselves out. They clung to him like drowning men, Will clutching at his shirt and Trisha wrapped around his neck, apologizing over and over.

Will, as four-year-olds are wont to do, finished crying and immediately fell asleep. Ed held his son against his shoulder while the last of Trisha's hiccupping, wrenching sobs petered out. Then he explained in a quiet voice that the role of an alchemist, the role of a _good_ alchemist, was to help the world around them, and to respect life in whatever form they found it.

"And it's not just you that you have to look out for. You're the eldest, Trisha. You're going to have to be responsible before Will is. You have to look out for him too, when your mom and I aren't there. Promise me?"

Ed had felt a quiet burst of pride when his daughter nodded solemnly, her face determined. "I will."

Two days later Alphonse had come home. Edward related what had happened and both brothers agreed that it was high time their kids had some instruction.

There was no time like the present, so that same day Edward and Alphonse had rounded up Trisha, Will, Louis and Rick and taken them off into the woods to practice.

The lesson had gone very well. All of the kids had a strong aptitude for alchemy, and Al and Ed kept things interesting. Then one of the twins had misdrawn their array and sent a glob of mud flying straight into Ed's face.

There had been a hush while the guilty twin gaped, frozen stiff as his uncle clawed mud out of his nose and mouth. Alphonse took one look at his brother and started laughing so hard that tears streamed down his face. His brother's eyes smoldering at him through their layer of sludge only set the giggling fit off all over again.

His fuming sibling retaliated by clapping his hands and dumping a wall of river water on him. Al, sputtering indignantly, slapped his hands together and shouted "You're not getting away with that!" He caught his snickering brother in the ear with a particularly rank patch of muck.

"Al, you backstabbing little traitor!" Ed roared as he struck the ground with open hands. Mud erupted around Alphonse.

But one flash of light later Al was safe behind a stone barricade. "_Who's_ little?" he caroled back gleefully.

The mud fight—or rather, mud war—had begun.

Rick and Lou had backed their father up, while Trisha and Will joined the scrimmage on Ed's side. The kids soon defected, ambushing Ed and Al with alchemy-induced waves from the river. They managed to erect a barricade and scuttle behind it before either brother could retaliate.

The war soon degenerated into a squealing, yelping, mud-pitching free-for-all with the kids being sorely outmatched. Ed and Al didn't need arrays to sling mud; the only way the kids could keep up was to throw it. Al was keeping them pinned down behind their wall by way of a small, mud-lobbing cannon, and Ed was doing his part by constantly shifting the ground beneath them, making it impossible to draw an array.

Then one of the kids (Ed suspected Trisha) had the bright idea to transform their stone and mud wall into a monstrous, gaping mouth of sludge that lunged for the older Elrics. At the same time, Ed and Al constructed huge earthen hands that emerged out of the ground beneath the kids. With no one defending against either attack, everybody went flying into the river.

The trek home was slow going, both sets of cousins picking gobs of mud off their clothes and flinging them at each other. Ed and Al weren't any better. The brothers sparred and wrestled cheerfully all the way, with the kids occasionally jumping in to make it a six-way melee.

When they finally got back they had missed lunch by two hours. Every one of them was so clotted with mud, sticks and leaves that the only way to identify anybody was by height and eye color. Spotting them, Winry had grabbed the camera and Arelana had grabbed the hose.

Winry bullied them all into two lines, small Elrics in front and not-so-small in back.

That was the image Edward kept in the case in his cloak pocket: him and Al, with their arms around the other's shoulders and caked with enough mud that if someone tossed seed on them they would probably have sprouted, beaming at the camera with their four grinning, articulated globs of dirt.

Ed also remembered what had come after the picture.

Winry snapped two shots, then Arelana, who had snuck up behind them, unleashed the hose.

Click, click--fwa-WHOOOSH!

The two adult Elrics bore the brunt of the assault, yelling and cursing (mostly Ed), tripping over each other or the yelping horde, alternately trying to scatter or wrestle the hose or the camera away from their respective wives. Unfortunately for them, Lana's aim was uncannily good. She kept them well away from herself and Winry.

_Those_ pictures, Ed knew, were the ones Winry kept framed over her work bench. One shot, a close up of Ed, was her particular favorite. Blinded by water, he'd run into Al, who had just started to stand back up, and gone flying over his brother's back…just in time to get shot in the face with the hose once again.

The picture caught Ed in his moment of flight, arms and legs outstretched on the air, his face totally obscured by the blast of water.

Hence the mischievous glint in his daughter's eye when she looked up at him.

"I like Mom's picture better."

Ed snorted. "Yeah, I just bet you do. You and your mother love seeing me make a fool of my…self…" He trailed off, suddenly aware of someone standing behind him. That someone had, in fact, been standing behind him for some time.

Edward turned back toward the aisle and locked eyes with a woman attired in an expensive-looking, dark blue suit.

"Is this seat taken?" she asked. Ed's eyes narrowed at her voice, which was a little too sweet and deferential to suit the cold behind her eyes. But he shrugged and nodded at the empty bench. "Go ahead."

Trisha, oblivious, had pulled out the next picture. "There's Uncle Al and me! I'm so _little_."

"You still are."

"Am not! I'm taller than Louis and Rick _and _Will!"

"Shorter than me, though," her father pointed out, tongue in cheek.

"Not for long! I'll be taller than Uncle Al before I'm through!"

Edward leaned down and kissed his huffing daughter on the crown of her head. "I know you will. That's why I'm teasing you now."

"Hmph." Trisha folded her arms and tried to glare, but her grin refused to be banished.

Just then the serving cart rolled up, pushed by a jolly-looking, middle aged man, and stopped before their alcove. "Sweets? Treats? Something to tide over the little miss there, sir?"

"You hungry, Tri?"

"Dumplings and syrup!" The aroma from the cart had informed his daughter that her favorite treat was aboard.

"I suppose that's a yes." Grinning, he turned back to the man to order, only to see a look of recognition spreading across his face.

_Oh, great…_Ed thought.

"Mr. Elric? Are you Mr. Elric the Fullmetal Alchemist, sir?"

Ed sighed and tried not to wince. _Should've worn my jacket inside out. Bloody flamel's too recognizable._ "Yes."

Fortunately, the older man interpreted Edward's expression and acted accordingly. He leaned in and said very quietly "The conductors, the engineer and the firemen told us pullmen that any Elric gets complementary service." He grinned, showing two gold teeth. "And I would've anyway sir. I was working this train when the Eastern Rebellion tried to kidnap that General.

He straightened again and grinned, flashing a golden tooth. "Your money's no good here, sir. And if that little lady belongs to you, she gets free eats, too."

"Yeah! Dumplings an' syrup!"

"Yeah, she's mine." No matter how many times he said that, Ed always felt like throwing out his chest and crowing. He held up three gloved fingers. "Three sticks each, then."

"Here you are. And here _you_ are, sweetheart."

"Thanks, mister!"

"Thank you." Edward nodded to the man.

"Thank _you_, sir. Couldn't have you thinking trainmen have short memories, now could we?" Chuckling, he trundled off down the aisle. Ed kept his eyes on his food, fighting the temptation to check if anyone was peering around their seat at him.

"How's the food, Tri?"

"Good!"

"Ahh, your hands are already sticky. Here, hold mine while I pick up the pictures. And don't eat 'em; I didn't get breakfast, either."

Edward was bending down to pick up the photos that had fallen on the floor when the woman finally spoke.

"That's a very nice set of pictures, Mr. Elric. Where were they taken? At your home?"

"Just out in the sticks." Edward waved his one gloved hand casually toward the window and tried to look bored, but his jaw clenched. There was something about the way this woman talked that _really_ bothered him…it reminded him too much of the coolly superior tone the Colonel had taken with him when he was younger. And made him bristle just as it had back then…

"Is this your brother? The so-called Soul Alchemist?" She was holding out a picture of Alphonse, laughing as the twins tried to wrestle him to the ground (Al had let them win).

Edward all but snatched the picture out of her hand. _So-called, huh?_

"Yeah. That's him." He bit the words off, irritated. If Trisha hadn't been with him, he would have ignored the woman until she returned the favor. But he didn't want to look rude in front of his daughter.

"Since you already know my name, it's only fair you tell me yours, Miss..?"

"Merel. Ms. Abigail Merel," She offered it with a cool little smile. She seemed very aware that her questions irritated him. Sometimes Edward wished he were a little less transparent.

"A pleasure, I'm sure," he mouthed the words tonelessly, but met her eyes as though he were trying to bore through them into her brain. _What the hell does she WANT?_

Suddenly he had a brilliant idea. "Trisha, you can have the rest. I want to get some sleep before we get off."

"Okay!"

"Don't make yourself sick," Edward added. He leaned back and closed his eyes. _Ask your pointed little questions _now_, lady_, he challenged smugly, but silently.

But Ms. Merel had one more ace up her sleeve. After almost ten minutes had ticked by she spoke again, this time to the smaller, feminine version of the man doing his best to pretend Merel did not exist.

"So your name is Trisha? That's a pretty name," she said, too-sweetly. Edward nearly "woke up" to glare at her.

"Yeah," Trisha replied. Ed smirked inwardly. Adults learned early that condescending to _his_ daughter was a big mistake. Tri _hated_ being treated as though she were stupid. And she the same degree of restraint when she was angry as Ed himself had at her age: precisely zero.

Ed resolved to sit back and watch the fun.

"And how old are you, sweetheart?"

"Twenty." Edward was hard put not to laugh at that one.

"You're quite a big girl, then," the woman continued blithely, rolling right over the sarcasm. "Does your Daddy teach you alchemy?"

"Sure."

"Are you very good?"

"I'm better than everybody except Dad and Uncle Al."

"Who else can do alchemy in your family?" The woman put a marked emphasis on _can_, as though she suspected that the little girl was puffing up her abilities at the expense of the non-alchemists in the family.

Trisha snorted. The lady had pricked her pride. "I'm better than William and Lou and Rick. Niko doesn't count yet 'cause he's a baby.

"But I'm the oldest," she added. She wanted to be fair; Will was a whole year and a half younger, and Louis and Richard were half a year behind him.

"Are those your brothers?"

"Will and Niko are my brothers. Lou and Rick are my _cousins_." Said as though any idiot could have figured it out. Ed could have whistled in gleeful admiration.

"Your brothers didn't come with you?"

"'Course not. Will came last time, and Niko's too little." Spoken from a lofty nine years of age.

"So they're back at home in Mallowpool?

"Riesem_bul_," Trisha corrected. Her father winced mentally. She had just unwittingly confirmed what he hadn't wanted the woman to know.

But Merel seemed to back off. "Of course. They must've been sad to be left behind."

Ed felt Trisha shrug. "It's Will's turn to go next time."

"Did you know your Daddy's very famous?"

"'Course. He's the best alchemist ever." Again, Edward stopped himself from smiling by the skin of his teeth.

"Do you know what he's famous for?"

"Dad and Uncle Al tell me stories."

"But do you know what he's most famous for?"

"Being the youngest National Alchemist ever. Everybody knows that."

"Really? I heard it was because he's the only National Alchemist to ever murder a city."

Ed stiffened—

"You're a liar, lady." Edward snapped his eyes open to see his daughter standing, all clenched fists and hot yellow eyes.

"Trisha." When Edward spoke, he got a hot stab of satisfaction out of seeing the woman twitch.

"We're moving. Get your coat." He handed his daughter her suitcase, shot the woman a hard look and moved out into the aisle, turning back for his daughter.

Trisha stood with her suitcase in one hand and her coat in the other. Edward was startled to realize she was trembling. He reached out a hand to her, his voice gentle. "Trisha sweet, it's all right. She doesn't know anything about Al and me."

His daughter wasn't listening. She stared at the woman.

"You don't know _anything_," Trisha said, her high child's voice piercing the coach's sudden expectant silence.

"My dad never hurt anybody."

Edward took her hand, and Trisha allowed herself to be led from the compartment.

---------

It was a relief when the train finally ground to a halt two transfers and five hours later at Central Station. Trisha hadn't spoken since they had found new seats, and Edward had seethed in silence the entire time. Father and daughter had picked up their belongings and stepped off the train without a word.

Edward walked along with his suitcase slung over a stiff shoulder and one hand in his pocket, grinding his teeth and not really watching where he was going. He was sufficiently menacing in this pose, though, that he didn't need to; people on the sidewalk were giving him a very wide berth. Trisha followed in his wake, eyes on the ground. She was thinking very hard.

"Dad?" she murmured suddenly.

Her father stopped so fast that she nearly walked into him, but he didn't turn. "What is it, Trisha?" He was fighting hard to keep his voice level. It wasn't Trisha he was angry with. Hell, he wasn't even that angry about the woman had said; he'd heard it all before, and worse. He was angry that the fact that his family could be hurt because of him had once again shoved itself his face. He was absolutely _furious _that some strange woman had dared to drag up Lior in front of _his _little girl. As many times as it had happened—more than a few—it never failed to make him furious.

Mostly because he believed hearing these accusations over and over would instill in his children an inevitable question. And he was afraid this was the one his daughter was about to ask.

"_Dad, did you really kill those people in Lior?"_

After that question, it would not matter that he had not. The doubt would always be there. Edward couldn't turn, fearing if he did he would see that doubt in his daughter's eyes.

"Dad, why don't you _tell_ people about Lior? About the scarred man and the Fuhrer person, who wasn't really human?" The words came flooding out, impossible to halt.

"People always say mean things about you, and Uncle Al too, sometimes. And it's not even for something you did! Why don't you tell them you didn't do anything?"

Trisha balled her fists and looked at the ground, squeezing her eyes shut in a transparent attempt to hide tears. She hated crying, especially where someone could see her. It was an odd point of pride that she shared with her father.

"Trisha…" Ed stopped. _She still believes me. Still believes _in _me._

To say he was relieved would have been the understatement of the century.

Oblivious to the people around them, the Fullmetal Alchemist knelt on one knee before his daughter and trapped her hands with his own. Then he started again.

"Tri, I've never lied to you and I'm not going to start now. People will always say things like that about me. You don't know how sorry I am that you and your brothers have to hear that crap and be hurt by it." _I'd put a stop to it if I could_, he thought fiercely. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. It's not meant for you, and none of it is your fault."

"How come they do it, though?" Trisha forced herself to look her father full in the face.

The tears his daughter was screwing up her fierce little face to hide hit Edward like a knife shoved in his guts. He groped for a way to explain.

"Huh. Well…you know that General Mustang cleared me when I came back from across the Gate. He was there, and told the people who run things now what really happened, so I didn't go to jail.

"But a lot of people died at Lior. And their families didn't really have any proof that it happened the way Mustang and I said it did. Scar had been killed. He could never stand trial or answer for everything he did, so people couldn't really resolve anything. The families of all the soldiers couldn't know for certain that they had died for a reason.

"I was there, I had _something _to do with what had happened, and the government had classified the entire business. That's all anybody really knew, so it's not real surprising that some people drew their own conclusions about Lior."

There were some, Edward knew, who believed that he himself had caused the disaster, and the blame had subsequently been placed on Scar so that the military wasn't forced to imprison one of its most powerful and useful alchemists. He wished that the theory didn't make such awful sense.

Trisha sniffed and scrubbed at her face with her sleeve. "That's not fair."

Her father sighed. "No, Tri, not really." _Fair never had anything to do with Equivalent Trade. And _I _did earn the bad feeling for Lior; I didn't lay the array on the city, but I couldn't do anything to stop it, either._ "But that's the way it is."

Tri scowled. She didn't much care for the way things were. "One time when you weren't home, Reggie Brookley came over with his cousin. His cousin said that you should've been put in jail 'cause you killed our soldiers and helped the Liorans escape."

Ed frowned. It was the first he had heard of this. "What happened?"

"I punched him in the face."

Trisha made a face half-proud, half-embarrassed when her father chuckled. "I was angry! But after that Reggie's mom wouldn't let him play with us any more."

Glancing down suddenly, she addressed her next question to the sidewalk. "Can't you just get everyone together and tell them what really happened? Doesn't it hurt you too?" Trisha pleaded quietly.

Edward's memory flashed back to a moment from three years ago. He remembered the way his six-year-old daughter had held out the cart-crushed kitten hopefully, trusting that he could make everything better again. He remembered how her small face had crumpled when he had taken the mangled scrap of fur from her and shaken his head.

_Can't you fix it, Daddy? _she had asked.

Ed pulled his daughter in and hugged her tightly, feeling tears soak through his shirt when she buried her face in his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Tri. It only really hurts me when my kids get hurt by it." He kissed the top of her head, absurdly grateful for the way the people around them didn't acknowledge their presence outside of an occasional knowing smile. "I thought being thought of that way was a small price to pay for getting Al's body back to him and getting back home.

"But I have your mom and you and your brothers and Al and your aunt and your cousins." Ed held his daughter out so he could look at her in the eye. He had to know she understood.

"Next to that, nothing else matters. So I can take anything people want to say about me.

"They could say I wear pink ribbons and dance naked in the moonlight and I wouldn't give a damn."

His daughter looked at him wide-eyed for a minute, startled, then burst into giggles.

Edward climbed to his feet, smiling the secret, quiet smile reserved only for moments like these. "Better?"

Trisha nodded and slipped her free hand into his. He squeezed her fingers, smiling when she squeezed back fiercely.

"Good. Now, off to General Shit so I can make him regret cutting my leave short."

"Dad?"

"What?"

His daughter flushed and looked down at her boots. "I just think…I just wanted to tell you…I think you're really brave."

—_Al screaming, his fingers crumbling like ash as the gate swallowed him—blood rushing from the stump arm where his arm had been—blood on his hands as Greed's dying breath bubbled red from the homunculus's mouth—watching as Al read through another night spent without sleep, without a body, guts clenching as guilt and the fear that he would fail his brother ate him from the inside out—Scar's branded hand reaching out of the dark—Envy's jaws closing on his father—soldiers—screaming—hate—pain—fear. Fear always riding him, the only constant through most all of his life._

"_I think you're really brave."_

Edward Elric swallowed and closed his eyes against the memories. He faced his daughter instead, here and whole and_ real_. "I try to be, dearheart," he said softly.

"I've always tried to be."

---------

The door gave a very satisfying crash as Ed threw it open and stormed through like a blond thunderhead, aimed unerringly for the dark-haired occupant of the vast desk set before the far window.

Brigadier General Riza Mustang, working at another desk to the right, acknowledged the Fullmetal Alchemist's entrance with a faint sigh. Yet however exasperating Colonel Elric could be, the general always had a smile for the young girl trailing in his wake.

Riza caught Trisha's eye and patted the front of her desk in mute permission. Trisha smiled and scrambled up to sit on the edge. Riza's orderly desk was the best seat in the house for the impending exhibition of verbal abuse.

"Mustang! What do you mean by giving me a week's leave and then cutting it off four days later? You bastard! I've got better things to do then hang around here with _you_." The _you_ was spoken as though a tribe of incontinent baboons would be infinitely preferable to sharing the same air as the general, let alone the same room.

Ed caught his daughter pulling a face at him, the same one her mother made when she informed him that he acted more like a kid himself than someone with kids of his own. He winked in return.

Mustang merely leaned back in his chair, wearing the expression of careless arrogance that he did so well. The eye patch added a roguish touch. Despite the comment he had made ages ago that Mustang's headwear didn't suit him, with it Ed could see him swaggering up and down some captured frigate, complete with cutlass and evil chuckle, jabbing hapless victims off a plank. The patch had only made the pirate more visible.

"You should be grateful, Fullmetal. If I didn't remember to pull you out of the sticks once in the while, I might forget why I pay you."

"Like you could when you have me up here for _months_ doing the work of _three_ alchemists _by myself_ and send Al to the ass-end of _nowhere_ so I can't even compare notes with him.

"How the _hell _am I supposed to research what you _tell_ me to research when I'm doing everybody else's work, and when I have free time to do research you make me come running back up here?" This was bellowed at the top of his voice, which was enough to make pens rattle on the desk. Edward's lung capacity was the envy of every drill sergeant in the Amestrian army. "You ever think of that, you incompetent, irritating, smug-faced, piece-of-shit excuse for a matchstick!"

Mustang pointedly studied his gloved hands, bringing two fingers and a thumb together in a vaguely menacing way. "Careful, Fullmetal. I've always been curious to see what you'd look like without eyebrows."

Ed thrust his chin out defiantly and snorted, unimpressed. "Take your best shot. It'll be worth it to see Winry beat your head in."

"How like you to hide behind your wife, Fullmetal, knowing that I am a gentleman who would never stoop to upsetting a lady."

"_Who_ hides behind _whose_ wife, General My-Wife-Actually-Does-All-the-Work-so-I-Can-Strut-Around-and-Not-Get-Shot-for-Incompetence, _sir_?"

Edward got a quiet chuckle from Riza for that one. He refolded his arms and smirked, knowing he had scored a solid point.

Roy's eye narrowed speculatively, causing Ed's smirk to falter a bit.

"As I was saying, it sounds to me as though I've been giving you too much paperwork, Fullmetal. Perhaps latrine duty would be better suited to a man of your…standing."

Ed's eyes narrowed. Had the bastard just made a shot about his height? "You make me shovel shit, you shit colonel, and it'll just end up in your office."

General Roy Mustang glanced up at Edward (the only time Ed got to look down on Mustang was when the older man was sitting and he himself was standing) and the younger alchemist's golden glare bore right back into his face.

They locked eyes like that for half a minute.

Then they both smirked.

"God, Edward. I must be slipping when an upstart like you can actually get the better of me."

Ed snickered. "Getting slow, old man."

"Only you could mistake age for maturity, Fullmetal. Who's that with you?"

Ed grinned and stepped to the side, revealing the small, red-clad form seated behind him. "Trisha came along for the ride this time. Tri, say hi to General Shit."

Young Trisha had met Roy Mustang for the first time when she was three. Ed had finally brought the toddler up to Central in the wake of a dispute with Breda and Havoc. Breda had voiced the opinion that a three-year-old couldn't possibly do alchemy, Ed insisted that _his_ daughter could, Havoc informed Edward companionably that he was full of shit, and things had escalated from there.

Neither Havoc nor Breda voiced their doubts about Trisha's abilities after that (they still weren't sure what Ed had turned their uniforms into, but the two men had smelled worse than skunks for weeks and had no desire to repeat the experience), but Ed brought her along to prove it anyway.

Everyone immediately conceded to the beaming father that little Trisha was indeed exceedingly cute (which she was, but no one would have dared to _not_ say it after what happened to Jean and Heymans). Mustang had gone so far as to say it was lucky she took after her mother, but he was the only one who could insult Fullmetal with near-impunity.

Once Edward set his daughter down Trisha, fearless in the face of strangers, ran straight to Mustang and peered up at him intently. Roy had looked disconcertedly down at the bright-eyed toddler who, despite what he'd said, lookedfrighteningly like Fullmetal when faced with a particularly complex problem of alchemy. Or when he considered just _how _he would pull off some expressly forbidden stunt…

"Kol…kol-nel…" Trisha attempted, her face screwed up in babyish concentration.

Her normally dignified father was nearly jumping up and down in pride and excitement, drawing incredulous looks and chuckling from Farman, Breda and Havoc. "Look! Look, she knows you and she's never even seen you before! MY LITTLE GIRL IS SO SMART!"

Mustang couldn't resist contributing to the general amusement at Edward's behavior. "It appears we have a true heir to Hughes in our midst. I'll remind you, Fullmetal, that an excess of five family photos carried on your person is in violation of this office's policy." The snickering from the peanut gallery choked off when Ed leveled a glare at them that might have scorched paint even divided between them.

The subsequent quiet allowed Edward's daughter to be heard with exquisite clarity.

"Kol-nel," Trisha repeated. "Kol-nel _Shit_."

Well pleased with her accomplishment, Trisha toddled the rest of the way over to Mustang, hugged his leg, grinned up into his astonished face and burst into peals of laughter.

All eyes turned back to Edward, who was staring wide-eyed and slack jawed at his daughter.

"I…" He swallowed. Riza was giving him The Look… "I didn't teach her that, I swear."

They eventually worked out that there was a picture of Mustang and the Elric brothers back in Riesembul. This picture received a great deal of abuse at Ed's hands, who, when summoned back to Central weeks before his leave was up (which he often was) or reassigned to complete or review someone else's project (which often happened), was in the habit of pointing at it and bellowing "Damn you, Colonel Shit!"

He hadn't realized that Trisha could see this picture from her perch in the high chair, where she was spooned her food while Ed tried frantically to finish whatever he was working on before he had to rush back to Central.

Edward babbled his confession hoping for clemency from Riza, who was giving her pistol a speculative look. "Please don't tell Winry," he begged unabashedly. "She'll kill me." He was fully aware that Riza and Winry enjoyed comparing notes on their children.

Mustang had raised one black eyebrow at Ed, then stooped and picked up the toddler attached to his leg. Unbeknownst to the general, Trisha loved to be held, had the tensile strength of elastic and could, much to her parents' dismay, climb like a monkey. The little girl immediately wrapped herself around Roy's head.

Even Edward was impressed (though he would never, ever admit it) by how Mustang managed to maintain his dignity in the face of Trisha Esmé Elric, the human cockle-burr. The trio had no such restraint. Breda roared flat out, pointing and holding his sides, and was quickly joined by Fury's high shout of laughter and Farman's deeper chuckle.

Mustang's voice was somewhat muffled by red corduroy, but still intelligible over the din.

"I see she takes after her father after all. God help you, Fullmetal."

Mustang came around his desk and bowed with a flourish, offering his hand. He always played the consummate gentleman with Trisha. Trisha, as always, bypassed the hand and hugged him like she was trying to squeeze the breath out of him. She _liked_ Mr. Roy, and even though her father complained about him and at him all the time, his stories made him a hero too. She secretly thought they were a lot alike, though she was careful never to make that observation out loud.

Ed watched Mustang's face soften and smiled at the wall. If he ever harnessed his daughter's hugs as a weapon, he could doubtless rule the world.

"Trisha, it's good to see you again. You've gotten really tall…" his eye slid lazily to Ed "…unlike your father, who never bothered to grow up."

Edward didn't screech, but a vein stood out strong in his forehead. He gave Mustang a carnivorous smile.

"Better watch it, old man. Assessments are coming up, and battle assessments are still optional."

The general just smirked. "I'm not worried."

"I can fix _that_."

"Trisha, would you mind terribly if I turned your father into a torch?"

"I don't, but Mom might kill you with her wrench." Trisha grinned cheekily at her glowering father.

"It's a pity, Fullmetal, but I think I'd as soon avoid being beaten to death by your wife."

Roy cut Edward's snarl off as it began by turning to Riza. "It's about time to break for lunch, isn't it?"

His wife consulted her watch. "The Performance Review is due tomorrow morning, and the report from the Northern Intelligence branch needs to be--"

"I think we should break for lunch now," Roy stated, managing to sound blissfully unconcerned by a report that was easily worth seven hours of review and consideration. Riza sighed stoically.

"Young lady," Mustang addressed Trisha, holding out his arm. "How would you like to have lunch at my home? I'll even invite your father, though he's never done anything to earn the honor." Roy threw Edward a careless look over his shoulder.

Ed's eyes narrowed, but he let the sally pass. He wasn't one to jeopardize an invitation for free lunch.

"Dad, can we?" Trisha asked excitedly. She was practically swinging from Roy's arm. "I want to see how Mr. Roy's gloves work!"

Roy lifted a questioning eyebrow in Edward's direction.

"I described how your gloves worked once. Trisha's really keen to know what they're made of."

"I thought a prodigy like yourself would have figured that out, Fullmetal."

Ed smiled in a way that might have made a man quail, had he a lesser constitution than Roy Mustang. "Who's to say I didn't? But giving a nine-year-old the means to set things alight with a snap of her fingers didn't seem like the smartest thing, somehow."

"Dad said I could do it if I could figure it out for myself," Trisha added, pouting.

Roy smiled, but chose not to comment.

---------------------------------------------------

Mustang and Riza lived in a two-story house in the old district of Central. The foundations were heavy granite, with warm tan and cream brickwork above it. It wasn't the biggest home, nor the smallest, and one of the least pretentious. Its one outstanding feature was the huge, high-walled garden surrounding the house.

It was a beautiful April afternoon, so they set up a card table out back and had lunch in the sunshine. Mustang skinned out of his uniform jacket and gave Trisha a demonstration of his alchemic prowess in his shirtsleeves, culminating in a whirling procession of hundreds of tiny flares and sparks that split and ignited more of themselves, spinning through the air like demented fireflies. Another flick of his fingers and the flares winked out like bursting stars. The General bowed as the trails of afterglow faded, not even breathing hard, his cocky half-smile firmly in place.

Even Ed, knowing the sheer concentration and fine control it took to feed and coordinate the tiny pockets of oxygen, managed to clap grudgingly out of professional appreciation. Trisha whooped and demanded to see the general's gloves.

It was only after lunch, when Trisha had been summoned away from the table to demonstrate her own alchemic talent at Riza's behest, that Mustang revealed the true reason for inviting them to his home.

"Fullmetal, I have to know if you or your wife ever told anyone about how the Rockbells died."

Ed's head snapped up, eyes widening. "What?"

"You heard me. Did you?" Roy's face was utterly expressionless, but his voice was colder than a glacier and twice as dangerous to cross.

"No." Edward sat with his mouth open, trying to get the gears of his brain to mesh. His surprise had thrown him enough that he hadn't even thought to be angry at the accusation. "Nobody knows except me and Winry and Al. No one ever will." Edward closed his mouth and leaned forward on the table, looking Roy dead in the eye. "I swear."

Ed waited until the measuring look in Roy's eye faded before he turned away, watching Trisha practice.

"General…Roy…Al and I would still be stranded across the Gate if you hadn't figured out what we were attempting to do. I haven't forgotten, and neither has Winry." Ed's eyes lingered on his daughter chattering at Riza, bright and laughing and happy. Ed thought about how much colder and poorer his life would have been without her, or William, or little Niko, and felt icy fingers wrap around his heart.

"I didn't leave Winry alone. I was there when all three of my children were born. I was there when Al's sons were born." Edward Elric spoke to the table, his voice barely above a whisper but somehow more piercing than his customary furious shout or hiss of disapproval. "We got to tell Elysia _ourselves _what her father did for us. We got to come home."

Edward lifted his chin and looked the older man in the eye. "All of that. It's your fault, you shit colonel. I haven't forgotten. And I refuse to stay in debt to such a bastard." He growled the last with a sour grimace that nearly succeeded at hiding his smile.

Roy sat back in his seat, relaxing out of his mask of the cold-eyed, implacable general. The tiniest smirk flared to life and crept slowly across his face. _Leave it to Fullmetal to make gratitude sound like a threat_.

Edward frowned at the smirk, eyes narrowing. "What is that? What is that look?" His eyes widened. "You _bastard_. Did you just put me through that shit for _fun?_"

He choked off the rest of his tirade as Mustang held up his hands and shook his head in mute appeal. "I apologize, Edward. I would not have done it if it hadn't been necessary to verify _you_ were not the source of the information leak."

"What leak? What do you mean?" Ed hated manipulation in any form, and his tone warned that Mustang had best explain himself quickly.

Roy's eye glanced at him, then flicked away to Riza, who was smiling at the mastiff-sized stone lion that Trisha had just alchemized. One of Black Hayate's descendants sat at her heel.

"A woman came to my office last week to interview me for a newspaper. She danced around it for a while, but finally asked why the military covered up your responsibility for Lior." Mustang paused as Ed grimaced, watching him carefully.

"When I told her that she had been misinformed, and it had been Scar, not you, who laid the array on Lior, she asked if covering for you had been the price of your silence about the murder of Rockbells."

Edward's breath hissed from between his clenched teeth. "What did you do?"

The tightness in Roy's face faded, and his smile became sincere as he looked at his wife.

"_I _didn't do anything. Riza chased her off." His eye flicked back at Ed, and now he looked concerned.

"You had best keep your ears and eyes open. Whoever she is, she seemed out for blood."

"Did she say what paper she was with?"

"She's the main reporter for the _Central Distributed'_s so-called investigative column. A scandal writer named Merel. I didn't find out until later."

Ed sucked in a breath, feeling a scalding surge of rage. "_That's_ who that was?"

"What?"

He shook his head angrily. "Damn it. I wish I'd known that earlier. A woman named Abigail Merel came up to us on the train."

"What happened?"

Roy resisted the urge to lean away from the patch of air that suddenly seemed to boil around younger man. His face had twisted into a malevolent mask, a fanged, fire-eyed avatar of wrath that the Flame Alchemist remembered with a certain amount of trepidation. The fourteen-year-old Fullmetal had certainly had his moments of infamy, especially when it came to remarks on boy's height. But Mustang had discovered that a thirty-something Fullmetal who had fathered three children was a far more formidable animal.

The general had first witnessed this darker aspect of Ed's personality when he had dared infringe on the unspoken, inalienable agreement that Ed would always be present for his children's birthdays. Roy had failed to note the date and sent Edward off. The mayhem glinting behind the yellow eyes was dismissed as Edward's usual attitude of willingness and cooperation.

When Edward returned to Central, things started exploding. When Roy touched his food with his fork, when he opened a filing cabinet, _when he went to the men's room _(that incident had been by far the most mortifying), whatever he came in contact with would explode in his face.

Roy, not wanting to show weakness (and unable to catch Ed in the act) had endured this for three weeks before he finally snapped and threatened Colonel Elric with a court martial. Ed failed to show the slightest bit of repentance. In fact, when Roy accused Edward of regression to his twelve year old brathood and disregard for property before threatening to toss him in the stockade to teach him better respect, Ed had jumped up, stuck his face in his superior's and bellowed at him semi-coherently for ten minutes straight. The majority of the tirade was a torrent of abuse against Mustang, his ancestry and his personal habits. Yet from it the Flame Alchemist was able to glean that the trigger for his three weeks of hell at Fullmetal's hands had been when Ed's reassignment caused him to miss his youngest son's birthday.

Neither man had apologized, but objects ceased to spontaneously combust in the General's presence after that. Mustang, realizing that when it came to his progeny Colonel Elric was clearly unreasonable, uncompromising and utterly irrational, had his wife call Winry. He requested that the brigadier general take down the birthdays of all the Elric children and never fail to schedule Edward's leave to coincide with those dates (he assigned the duty to Riza knowing that if she forgot, her pistol inspired far better behavior in the colonel than he, a general, ever had).

When this monstrous aspect appeared, it only could only mean some perceived slight had been dealt Ed through his children, and that an unfortunate someone was about to buy the heavy end of the hammer. Mustang hoped it wasn't him; he had been the one to pay for damage inflicted by Colonel Elric the last time. He wasn't certain his office budget could bear that sort of strain again.

"She told Trisha that I was best known as the State Alchemist who had murdered a city." Edward half-hissed, half-growled the words.

It was Roy's turn to look shocked. "In front of Trisha?"

"_To _Trisha. I was trying to ignore her so she'd leave. But that _bitch_ started talking to _my_ daughter and I didn't have the sense to get out of there," Ed rumbled, closing his fist so tightly against the table that his knuckles cracked. "Bad enough that I thought she had lost somebody at Lior. But to have it turn out to be one of those bloodyrumor mongers…" Mustang watched Edward impassively, making a mental note to smooth out the dents Fullmetal's namesake was leaving in the table.

"Are you talking about that scandal writer?" Riza asked quietly, making Ed jump. He hadn't heard her walking up behind him. She stepped around the table to lay an unobtrusive hand on Roy's shoulder, who covered it with one of his own. Edward checked to make sure Trisha hadn't followed Hawkeye, but his daughter was still out on the lawn playing with the Hayate look-alike and two puppies who had decided to join in the haphazard game of fetch-and-chase.

"Yeah. I was telling Roy that I'd had a run in with her on the train here this morning. She…" Ed trailed off. "It wouldn't have mattered if Trisha hadn't been with me. I'm supposed to protect her from crap like this."

Ed put a hand over his eyes, getting a grip on himself. After a minute his temper had cooled enough to let him realize what his metal hand had done to the table.

He caught sight of the damage and winced, avoiding Riza's gaze. Hurriedly he slapped his hands together and reformed it. "Sorry," he apologized, still not quite looking at her. He hadn't lost control like that in a long time.

"It's all right." Hawkeye nodded calmly. "Did you talk about Alphonse and the Southern border yet?" she asked her husband.

Roy would've sworn he could _hear_ Ed's ears pricking up. "What about Al?"

"Jean called and said that Al's mission went well enough. He wanted me to relay the Lieutenant Colonel was fine before you called and harangued his aides."

Edward flushed. He had indeed done exactly that when his brother was new to his post. Later Al had calmly demonstrated to his older brother that he was at least as capable of taking care of himself as Ed by wiping the floor with him, in public and with prejudice. Which was probably why it had happened only once.

"Which brings me back to why I tapped you before your leave was up," Mustang continued. He leaned forward, speaking more softly. "They found human chimera."

Edward sucked in a breath. After a minute he said: "Was I right about why those kids were disappearing?"

"I don't know," Roy replied, just as soberly. "Jean didn't want to say much, even over a secure line. But Badenmeyer's team was recovered, and it seems the men who survived were…altered."

"_Damn_," Ed swore feelingly, though quiet enough that his voice wouldn't carry to Trisha playing on the lawn. "Did they get the alchemist who did it?"

"It appears so. Jean wanted you and the MPs on standby when Talbot ordered them back to Central." Mustang straightened, half-smiling. "Aren't you glad I cut your leave short?" he asked ironically.

Before Ed could reply, the sound of a door slamming inside the house made the adults turn. "That'll be Maes," Riza said.

"Mom? Dad? Are you home?" A boy's voice called from inside the house.

"Out here, Maes."

Edward watched as a raven-headed boy, hair thoroughly mussed and already halfway out of his school uniform, emerged from the house. Riza's chestnut eyes, sharp chin and serious demeanor were strong in his face. Yet the eleven-year-old, Ed noticed with a smirk, had clearly inherited his father's swagger.

Maes squinted at the blond newcomer, then broke into a run. "Uncle Chibi!"

Mustang smirked as Ed pretended to growl in protest of his son's pet name, but smiled all the same as the boy skidded to a halt. When Ed and Al returned from whatever lay on the other side of the Gate, Maes had been one year old, and his "Aunt" Winry had been a babysitter and willing admirer during the Elric brothers' absence.

At first Edward had been less than enthusiastic about Mustang-spawn being underfoot for an occasional weekend or the rare campaign that called for the General and Hawkeye but not Ed himself. He hadn't been shy about saying so, either. Yet as the years had passed, Ed's complaints became rarer and less vehement, seeming more and more like a show of reluctance than the genuine article. It wasn't until Riza had gone to retrieve her son from the Elric household at Central and caught the colonel breaking down complex principles of alchemy for an eager, dark-haired nine-year-old along with his own tawny-headed imps that Ed's display of annoyance stopped entirely.

"Hey short stuff," Ed smirked back. "How's school?"

"Dull. Thanks for those alchemy books you lent me. They got me through religious studies without dying from boredom." Ed imagined that Roy's eye-roll had looked much the same when the general had been his son's age.

"You've been reading in class again?" Riza's tone could have made a rampaging bear stop in its tracks.

"No," her son replied, too quickly. His father winced. Ed grinned. "_So_ busted."

But fortune intervened on Maes's behalf.

Trisha had been eager to practice an array of her father's she had been trying out secret. It worked by pulling common elements together to react and propel a neutral object. Taking her chance to try it while the adults were occupied (and thinking it better to ask forgiveness than permission), Trisha had been using the array to make the ball fly upward. The aim wasn't that accurate, but the ball went _far_. A little too far, as a matter of fact…

_Uh oh_… Trisha thought.

The only warning the adults had was a yelp of "Look out!" from the younger Elric and a descending whistle from above. Edward (whose reflexes had been honed by his adventures as well as a near decade of child-rearing) immediately flung himself away from the card table.

Riza backed to a safe distance, but when Mustang tried to shove his chair backward its legs caught on the grass and flipped him onto his back. He watched helplessly as the ball descended toward his face. It impacted with a thud three inches from his right ear and rebounded high into the air, bouncing merrily across the lawn until it rolled to a stop just short of the bay doors. Roy sighed in relief. He hadn't wanted to explain that he'd lost the _other_ eye to a nine-year-old with her father's penchant for experimentation.

And then the dogs stampeded. The puppies, fortunately, were still fairly small, but the older dog leapt up, cleared the table…and landed squarely on Roy's chest, knocking the wind out of him. Then the general had an excellent upside-down view of three canine backsides as the dogs pelted across the yard after the ball, not sparing him a backward look.

Trisha squealed. "Mr. Roy! Are you okay?" She came running up to them.

By then Mustang had rolled to his feet with as much dignity as a man who'd been trampled by seventy six pounds of dog could muster. Which wasn't much. Salvaging his pride in the face of an eleven-year-old sniggering at him and the merciless laughter of Fullmetal was like assaulting a fire-storm clad only in cotton swabs. It was futile, it was painful, and you were going to look like an ass despite all your efforts.

Even his normally stone-faced wife was attempting to stifle a giggle as she leaned over to help him to his feet.

"Nice shot, Trisha," Ed snickered as his daughter ran up.

His daughter shot him a look as she went past, but schooled her face into something more apologetic as she came up to Mustang. "I'm really sorry," she said.

Mustang shrugged, smiling faintly, but eyed her father opaquely the entire time. Ed noticed the stare and gave his superior a toothy smirk. That seemed to decide Mustang, who immediately spun on his heel and marched into the house.

Riza watched him go, wondering what her husband was up to. There'd been a glint in his eye that didn't bode well for someone…She caught Edward's attention with a glance; he was still snickering as Trisha insisted nearly getting brained and then stampeded was _not_ funny.

"If I were you, I'd find out what he was doing before I regretted it," she informed him bluntly.

Ed looked up, concern flitting briefly across his face. "What is he doing?"

"I don't know, but he's on the phone with someone. And I just heard your name."

Concern ignited into full-fledged alarm. Ed jumped up and sprinted into the house, his tied-back hair snapping out like a banner of war.

"What're Dad and Mr. Roy doing?" Trisha asked as she came up behind Riza. As she spoke there was a bellow from inside. Maes looked around expectantly as his mother sighed and Trisha started, recognizing the yell for her father's.

Riza sighed again as another bellow echoed across the lawn. "I suspect we'll find out shortly."

Maes grinned. He knew you couldn't pay for entertainment like his father and the Fullmetal Alchemist. His grin got wider as the yelling got more articulate.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR, YOU BASTARD?!"

"Honestly, Fullmetal, one would think you would thank me for the chance to be fawned over by your fellow alchemists--"

"THAT'S EXACTLY WHY I DON'T GO! EVERYONE COMING UP AND GAWKING AT ME, YOU ASSHOLE!"

"If you're thinking about calling and backing out, don't bother. I already called Winry."

"YOU—"

Mustang suddenly emerged from the house, looking smug but walking fast.

"—SHITHEAD—"

A blonde streak shot through the doors, teeth bared, flesh and metal arms each outstretched for the general's throat. Mustang abandoned his pretense at walking and broke into a sprint, moving impressively for a forty-year-old who was laughing his head off.

"—COLONEL!"

The chase ended as abruptly as it began. Riza, knowing it was only a matter of time before one of them resorted to alchemy and destroyed her yard, drew her pistol and aimed it unerringly at Edward. The younger man caught the flash of metal and reacted accordingly—he yelped and threw himself flat. However, he had been close enough to Mustang when he dropped that his steel hand caught Riza's husband across the ankle. For the second time that day, the general went flying.

Riza thought her husband's arc through the air was rather graceful, even if the way he planted himself face first in the ground spoiled the effect.

They sprawled there, unmoving. Riza wondered if they were both too mortified at their behavior to get up. She doubted it, but there was always the possibility.

Eventually Roy spoke. "_Well_ done, Fullmetal." It was amazing how he could manage to be sarcastic even through a mouthful of dirt.

"Shut up, old man. You can thank Riza that something worse didn't happen to you," Ed growled back, still face down in the grass.

Riza sighed. "Roy, stop antagonizing Edward and explain why you want him at the convention. I'm going to clean up." She and Trisha picked up the dishes. It only took a glance from his mother for Maes to grab the tablecloth and follow them inside.

Hearing Hawkeye's footsteps retreat into the house, Ed sat up and brushed grass off his vest with short, irritated smacks. "You actually have a reason for this besides torturing me?"

"Ha." Mustang smiled crookedly over his shoulder, rose to one knee and stood. "That _is_ a bonus.

"But the real reason is that this convention will have a special exhibition for youths exhibiting talent in alchemy. They were planning to showcase only those over ten, but I suspect that rule is being broken into small pieces as we speak."

Ed gave him a nonplussed look. "So…?" He knew Roy wouldn't have looked nearly so pleased with himself if this weren't something more than showing off the kids' skill in alchemy to dried-up, pompous old men.

"So I've been dropping a few hints to some of the more prominent professors of alchemy that this would be a prime opportunity to scout for talent. I was hoping one of the universities would offer Maes a scholarship. There'll be some politicians looking for publicity as well, so if you promise to be on your good behavior, perhaps I can convince them you aren't the monster that Merel is making you out to be. Even if everyone knows otherwise." His smirk grew a little wider as Ed glowered at him.

"So Colonel Elric, do I have your cooperation?"

Ed huffed, sighed, smirked wryly. "One day we should play poker instead of chess. Then I'd definitely win."

"It will never happen, Fullmetal. This general knows better than to pit himself against Elric luck. Or Elric slight-of-hand." Roy shot back just as wryly. Ed pretended to take offense.

"Speaking of Elrics," Mustang added. "I need to inform Alphonse about the convention. Unless you want to tell him?"

"Yeah, I will. He's coming back from the Aerugan border tomorrow. Arelana too. That's the _only_ reason I let you drag me back up here." Ed threw Roy a shark-eyed look.

Roy merely sighed tolerantly, as though indulging a ferocious kitten.

He added, "It's formal wear, so come prepared."

"Ah, damn." Ed raked his fingers through his hair, disgusted. "I hate dress uniforms."

"That's reasonable. You lack the air of maturity needed to carry them off well." It wasn't true, but Roy simply couldn't resist such a tempting target.

"WHO'S SO SHORT HE HAS TO RETAILOR UNIFORMS BECAUSE HE CAN'T WEAR NORMAL SIZES?!"

The quarrel might have started all over again if not for a timely save by Maes.

"Dad! Mom says to tell you that if you can't play nice with the other kids, she'll have to shoot you both," the boy sang out cheerfully from the door.

Mustang shrugged at his son and smirked at Ed, who gritted out a smile that was all tooth. "Please tell your mother that won't be necessary.

"As I was saying, it's formal wear, but no uniforms. We shouldn't look tied, visibly at least, to the military. Not with Hakuro there, and not with the sentiment some civilian alchemists have against those employed by the military."

Ed's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "In order to give the kids the best chance, without getting singled out by bias against me or you."

Roy smiled faintly and nodded. "If that's avoidable at all. It's probably…a wasted effort."

"Is Hakuro getting to be that big a problem?" Edward made an educated guess as to the reason for Mustang's caution. His tone was concerned, and for good reason. Hakuro was still one of the strongest of the old faction of the military, what had been the Fuhrer's sycophants and most ardent (and most corrupt) supporters. Even with the new democracy firmly in place, that faction still wielded a great deal of political power. General Hakuro in particular had made his animosity toward Mustang clear. It was due in large part to him that Mustang's every promotion and commendation had been a struggle.

Mustang shrugged nonchalantly, not meeting Ed's eyes. "It's enough that he went out of his way to tell me that he'd be there."

"Huh…" Ed frowned, considering, then grinned abruptly. "Wait a second. He's trying to make you edgy at an alchemy exhibition? Is he an idiot? Why don't you accidentally set his hair on fire, or better yet, let Maes do it."

Hearing laughter, Riza peered through the kitchen window into the backyard. She smiled, snorted a little in amusement and went back to scouring the pot in her hand.

"What's happening out there, Mom?

"Nothing. I was just making sure the laughter wasn't because one of them killed the other."

---

End of Chapter 3. Hoped you liked it, Frauen und Herrn


	4. Chapter 4

Along with other editing, I switched sections in from five to four for chronology's sake. I apologize for any confusion.

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Chapter 4: Children of War

Alphonse was asleep within minutes of finding their seats on the train to Central.

Arelana took the opportunity to look her husband over more thoroughly. He'd propped his head against the window frame in spite of his injury, his duster rolled between his face and the glass. Al's new charge had a side of the compartment all to himself and his pile of blankets and jackets. It was only after Lt. Klaus swaddled the boy in a fifth coat (commandeered from a grumbling Connor) that his trembling stopped. He nodded off halfway through the hot chocolate that had been scrounged from who knew where and passed along into their hands. The shallow rise and fall of the makeshift nest offered the only hint of life. Lana gathered up the cup dangling from one slack, downy thumb and set it aside.

She had already slid her jacket between her husband's stitched, spectacularly bruised shoulder and the rattling compartment wall. As his soft breath fluttered his sun-lightened bangs she was reminded of how much she loved to watch him while he slept. _It's still hard to believe that for four years of his life he didn't sleep at all. _She loved watching him whatever he was doing, but when he was asleep the faint worry lines around his eyes softened, and she could see her sons in his face. They smiled just as beautifully as their father did now.

Arelana had been born in Lior in 1901 with her twin sister Lavi, and grew up both in the relative peace under the Founder and the chaos of the civil war that followed his downfall. Her father was Jason Ashley, a traveling physician born in Central. He had come to Lior in 1899 and there met a school teacher named Ariela David, daughter of a Lioran professor of history and an Ishbalan refugee known throughout the East for her singing talent. Ariela was sharp, compassionate, quick-tempered and fiery, but it was her smile that captured the wandering physician's heart and tied it to the hot sand and open sky of Lior. "I saw your mother smile, just once—," her father would begin, laughing his booming laugh. "—and I knew my traveling days were over." Whenever he did this her mother always whapped him in embarrassment, but glowed happily for hours afterward.

Her father's occupation had saved them during the bloody civil war. In strife-torn Lior, a doctor was too indispensable to kill and too dangerous to make your enemy, if one day you should find yourself in need of his willing hands. They had helped whoever arrived at their door, be they Independent, Letoist or military, until the Independents decided that Dr. Ashley should be exclusive to their fighters.

Lana still dreamed, sometimes, of the faceless men who had come to their home in the night. She and her sister had never had time to scream before they had each been gagged, tied and tossed over a strange shoulder. Then they had been carried through the dark house to her father's study, where he had been bound with his own nightshirt. Once her father was presented with them, he had looked to their leader and nodded without another word.

Afterward her parents, sister and grandmother had been isolated and guarded by the Independent faction, but never harmed. Theirs was one of the few families to survive the war intact. The Ashleys fled to Central during the evacuation, and were among the earliest to return and begin restoration under the new administrator, Alexander Armstrong.

It had been Al's smile that caught her, over nine years ago in rebuilt Lior. It had been an August afternoon in the market square, when the heat was so dry and sullen that most people slept or nursed cold drinks in the shade of the myriad cafes and bars. The desert dust permeated everything during the dry season, and the clinic floor had to be rinsed twice daily to keep it from irritating their patients' throats and eyes, so she had gone for water to wipe it down. Lavi had skipped off as usual to put in an appearance with the covey of admiring boys who paid homage to her. Though they were twins, Lana and Lavi were a study in contrasts. Lavi was the undisputed beauty of the two; Arelana had always been stoic about how her own nearly black, outrageously thick hair and olive skin couldn't hold a candle to Lavi's rippling copper mane and golden tan. The only features they shared were the warm cinnabar of their eyes, their longish, board-straight Ishbalan noses and heart-shaped faces. Lana was quiet while Lavi was flirtatious, and spoke fearlessly to anyone she cared to. Lana loved working at her father's clinic and had rapidly advanced in her ambition to become a surgeon, even experimenting with alchemy to seal wounds and repair bones, but Lavi disliked the sight and smell of blood and fled the surgery whenever she had the chance. Lana and Lavi were night and day, earth and air, and loved each other all the more for the contrast between them. Lana was a rock, the sheltering tree her name implied, the one who came to the rescue when Lavi was in trouble (and Lavi kept her twin busy). Lana's was the shoulder her sister cried on when she managed to break her heart over the one boy who would have nothing to do with her. Lavi was the leader, the lion, throwing herself into everything headfirst. Lana loved and admired that recklessness, even when it caused them no end of trouble.

But some days the way every pair of male eyes rolled over her when Lavi was around was too much. It wasn't her sister's beauty she envied. It was that--though she knew her twin never intended it, and in spite of all the common sense that told her she was ridiculous to value the attention of men who only cared about appearances--her sister's admirers made her feel ugly and worthless.

That day the swarm of young men descended on them as soon as they stepped out of the door, and Lavi immediately stopped to chat and preen and bat her eyes, their chore forgotten. Lana sighed and cut her oblivious twin an irritated look, then snatched the dangling buckets out of her sister's hand and pushed through the crowd of worshippers.

She was halfway to the fountain square, buckets rattling in her fists, when it finally occurred to her there was no way she could get six full buckets of water back to the clinic alone. Lana snorted furiously and walked faster. She was too stubborn and embarrassed to turn around, even knowing that in the middle of a hot day the fountain would likely be deserted, and there would be no one to help her.

Yet that day the square was bustling in spite of the heat. The central plume of water seemed to be shooting higher than normal, throwing off a cool mist that felt wonderful when it touched her dry, dust-filmed skin. A large gaggle of children scrambled around it, wet, squealing and happy, while a few adults watched indulgently and enjoyed the spray. The mob of youngsters revolved around three men who appeared deep in discussion, but let themselves be interrupted every few minutes by small hands tugging insistently at their clothing. Then one would crouch, there would be a flash even brighter than the noon sunlight, and a child would run off with a cry of delight, clutching a new toy to their chest.

_They're alchemists_, Lana realized. Wanting a better view, she worked her way around the crowd to the side of the fountain closest to them. The first man was recognizable by his tremendous height and thick blonde mustache as the Mayor, Alexander Armstrong. One massive arm cradled a giggling child in a white lace dress, a little girl she recognized from the paper as the mayor's three-year-old daughter. Two boys who lived near her family's clinic dangled from the other arm like monkeys from a tree.

They sang out when they saw her. "Miss Lana! Miss Lana! Have you come to see the alchemists? Aren't they neat?"

Their excitement drew the Mayor's attention in turn. "Ah, Miss Ashley. Water for your family's infirmary? Your devotion to your patients never ceases to inspire me." In anyone else's mouth the words would have been simpering or sarcastic, but from Mayor Armstrong they glowed with sincerity and admiration. Lana felt her face flush hotter than even the sun could warm it and stuttered a thank you.

The mayor beamed. "It is merely the truth, Miss Ashley. There's no need for embarrassment. In fact, you may find that you have kindred spirits in my dear friends and fellow alchemists here."

The man in the grey duster held up his gloved hands self-effacingly. "Our jobs aren't nearly as important as a doctor's, Alex."

Mayor Armstrong set his daughter and the two boys down, encouraging them to go play by the fountain. "I find that you and your brother often underestimate the good you do others, Alphonse, but that wasn't what I wished to speak of. Miss Ashley is the reason I requested that you and your brother visit our city."

The eyes of the man in dark red (she remembered wondering whether they were truly the color of gold, or if the effect was some trick of the light) turned on her and narrowed. "And here I thought we were here to look over your problem with brigands on the Xingian trade route." He directed his unnerving gaze back to the mayor.

"Forgive me, Edward. I thought it better to mention only one reason for your visit, rather than risk an official…misunderstanding," The mayor rumbled somberly. The faces of the other two alchemists tightened, acknowledging some inference in the statement that she didn't understand. "Miss Ashley is pioneering what I believe to be a new form of alchemy. I have seen its results for myself, and recognize its great worth in the medical field, but I hoped you would evaluate it and perhaps vouch for her before the state, should need require it."

The expressions of both men sharpened with interest as they turned toward her. Unused to such scrutiny, she blushed and waved a hand in denial. "It's not really innovation. It's more like common sense."

"I'd like to learn about it, if Ms. Ashley cares to show us." That was the taller blond with the gentle bearing and earnest eyes. There was a strong resemblance between him and the man in red. He added hurriedly, "Only if you want, though. We don't want to intrude." His eyes lingered long enough on her face that she could see they were a warm, honey-touched color, not quite gray, not quite green. Nice eyes, really. They seemed kind, full of life and wit and humor…

They realized in the same instant they were staring at each other and blushed in unison.

The shorter man gave them both a smirk that was a little too knowing for comfort. "I don't know, Al. How about you handle this one?"

"I-What do you mean? What are _you_ going to do?" The taller man glanced from her to his grinning companion, looking alarmed.

"Oh, I thought Alex could show me the sights, tell me about the thefts, maybe visit with Rose, give the kids their presents and meet up with you later. C'mon Alex." The man in the red coat shoved his hands in his pockets and ambled off without a backward look, whistling.

"But Brother—_Alex_—" The gray-clad man appealed to Mayor Armstrong as his brother continued to walk, feigning deafness, but began backpedaling when the mayor positively sparkled in his direction.

The alchemist didn't move fast enough to escape being enveloped in the mayor's trunk-like arms. Lana thought she heard the man's spine creak and winced in sympathy. "Such an expression of brotherly love! When I behold the beautiful trust Edward bears you, Alphonse--!" Too overcome for words, the mayor squeezed even harder, oblivious to the feeble struggles and bulging eyes of the puny morsel of humanity trapped in his grip. The alchemist peered between the steel-cable arms at her in desperate hope, appealing to her with his wide, lovely eyes and hypoxia-darkened face. A doctor born and bred, Lana could not refuse a man in distress, even from so benevolent a source. She tapped Mayor Armstrong on one bulging shoulder and spoke in the brusque voice she usually reserved for recalcitrant patients. "Sir, if you want me to give this man a presentation of my alchemy, I'll have to take him to the surgery now. I have to change the dressings and bedclothes this afternoon."

The mayor released the younger man so quickly that he stumbled backward, hands on his knees, sucking in great lungfuls of air. "My apologies, Miss Ashley," the mayor rumbled contritely down at her. "I was being unforgivably thoughtless. I will give Alphonse into your capable hands and catch up with Edward. And Miss Ashley--" one massive hand lit as gently as a butterfly on her shoulder as he twinkled at her—"Please believe me when I say that you can trust both Alphonse's expertise and his heart." Armstrong gave the slighter man one last clap on the back that knocked him forward a few steps, then lumbered off after the red-clad alchemist.

When she turned back to the gray-clad man his face seemed to owe its redness to more than shortness of breath, and he was having a hard time meeting her eyes. "Thank you for rescuing me. I'm sorry about this." He put a gloved hand to the back of his head and chuckled ruefully. "We've known Alex for a long time. He saved our lives," he explained. "And he's always gone out of his way for us, so we try to help him whenever we can.

"But if you're uncomfortable with me imposing on you this, I won't." His eyes flicked up to hers, begging for her understanding.

Lana was intrigued enough to allow the intrusion, but still irritated enough to let him know what she thought about it. "I'm not uncomfortable. I'm wondering who you are and what credentials you have that make you such a good judge of my work. If the mayor hadn't vouched for you, I wouldn't be doing this at all." She cringed inwardly. She hadn't meant to sound so sharp. "I apologize. It's been a long day." _And it's one more blow to my ego to have someone as handsome as you around when I'm grouchy, sweaty and covered in dust._

The man flushed, the red spreading like thin ink across his skin. "Please don't. I'm the one who should apologize. It's more than fair for you to ask. I'm Alphonse El—Al. Please call me Al. My brother and I are alchemists; he works for the state and I help him do that." He seemed to realize he was babbling and snapped his mouth shut so fast his teeth clicked.

"He's a Nationally Certified Alchemist?" Lana was intrigued. She had always pictured National Alchemists as being her father's age or older. The qualification exam was reputed to take years of study.

The man gave her an odd look, as though bracing for something. Lana wondered if he experienced a great deal of hostility in Lior, a city sundered and obliterated by alchemy. She almost reassured him that she was one who remembered alchemy had also helped to rebuild her city. But when he only nodded mutely in reply, she gave a mental shrug and pushed the thought to the side. "I suppose you're as qualified as anyone could be. Would you mind filling those buckets? I'm sorry to have to ask," she said, then added under her breath "I thought I'd have help."

The alchemist overheard her muttered comment and flushed even darker. "I'd be happy to help as long as you can stand me. I don't know how else to apologize for all this." Then he smiled right at her.

Lana felt something flutter in the pit of her stomach. _Oh..._ For what felt like forever, she just looked at him. And he looked at her.

In the end, the State Alchemist was forced to come and collect his truant brother from the Ashley infirmary. Hours had slipped by without notice while Lana and her new friend discussed and debated theories of alchemy, laughed over the misadventures of their siblings and scrubbed down the surgery. She even showed the attentive alchemist how to properly dress a wound, and had him practice on her arm to get the wrappings right. He had thanked her profusely, laughing ruefully about how useful it would be in looking after his reckless brother. It wasn't until after they left together that Lana remembered why the alchemist had come in the first place. And, wonder of wonders, he had forgotten as well.

He was back on her doorstep the next morning, sans his grey cloak and the shorter alchemist. He apologized copiously for his forgetfulness and disturbing her once again, but didn't hesitate longer than a second or two once she had invited him in. She had to reassure him the entire length of the hallway before he finally gave her the smile she had been waiting to see. Yesterday's oppressive heat hadn't been playing tricks on her after all; this man had to be something special, to have a smile like that. Warm and wise beyond the number of his years, as her grandmother would say. His wasn't a sad smile, but it knew sadness; not sly or practiced-seeming, though the glint in his eye declared him fully capable of mischief…A good smile in a good face, with a good story behind his eyes.

She resolved to keep this one out of Lavi's sight.

She was so immersed her speculation on the alchemist it took a full moment to realize he was speaking. Blushing (and irritated by the realization she'd been staring at him blankly) Arelana asked him to repeat himself.

He blushed in return and asked again if there were a yard or any land attached to the clinic. When she informed him that there was, he asked diffidently if he could see it.

Puzzled, she led him to the courtyard where patients recuperated, weather permitting. It was a quiet, secluded place. Her grandmother had planted the young succulents that dotted its span as well as the bright-flowered vines that clambered up the surrounding buildings. The surrounding buildings blocked the noise from the street and created shifting patches of shade through the scorching day. Her father had dubbed it the Oasis, and he and all the family nursed its greenery with the same care and devotion they offered their patients.

She slipped her sandals off and sighed happily, savoring the cool feel of the grass between her toes. She watched the state alchemist out of the corner of her eye as he gazed around avidly. He gave her a questioning glance, as though requesting permission, then trotted over to a clump of furiously blooming jasmine and buried his face in them. His happy sigh mirrored her own. "It's beautiful here," he offered, smiling shyly.

She smiled back, then quirked an eyebrow. "That it is. There's only one other place in the city that has greenery like this…but why did you want to see our garden?"

His smile stretched into something that put her in mind of a charmingly bashful six-year-old with a gift secreted behind his back. "Well…I was trying to think of something I could do to help with dragging those buckets back and forth, and I had an idea."

Still grinning, he clapped his hands, then crouched and placed them on the ground. She watched wide-eyed as ground rumbled and shifted, and a smoothly round circle of pale stone slid from the ground like some strange, swift-sprouting tree. There was a sliding, grinding noise as it grew to stand slightly taller than her waist. The alchemist grinned at it, then looked back at her anxiously. "Is it all right?"

"'Is it all right?' It's a _well_." Lana thought her grin would split her face. "I'll never have to go to that wretched fountain in the wretched sweltering sun _ever_ again. _Thank_ you." Before her nerve could fail her, she stood up on tip toe and kissed him swiftly on the cheek.

She barely brushed her lips against his jaw, but his eyes went wide and his paler skin blazed red from forehead to collar.

Suddenly aghast at her temerity, she said in a rush, "My father's wanted a well for years, but we didn't have the money to dig one because we take so many people on credit and some can't pay at all and he's too proud to let the mayor make one and he'll be so happy!" Her ears were burning, and she didn't dare raise her eyes from the ground.

"—'m very happy to help." Al mumbled to his heavy boots. The tips of his ears were the color of brick. He too seemed incapable of looking anywhere higher than her ankles.

The good sense that had abandoned her up to that point finally put in an appearance, grabbing her about the hormones and giving her a solid clout to the head. She forced a self-conscious laugh and rapped her knuckles against her forehead. "Right. You're here to see my alchemy, not to make my family gifts with yours." She turned and marched briskly back inside, the alchemist trailing in her wake.

He watched silently as she laid out the necessary supplies on the sterilized steel of a surgery table. Then, taking the scalpel delicately in her fingers, she made a quick incision about the length of her longest finger through the epidermis of her forearm. Al gasped in shock and reared back, then started to grab for her hand. "What are you—!"

"Wait." Arelana reassured coolly, firmly, utterly calm. "Watch."

Using the blood that oozed sluggishly from the cut, she drew an array with the incision at the center, then touched two fingers to its edge. Light flared and died, and she held up her arm, whole and unmarked.

It was only when she noticed he was gaping at her as though she'd grown another head that the possibility that she'd stumbled on something world-shaking dawned on her.

She waited patiently as Al struggled to find his voice. "Would you…please explain what you just did." His voice was strained, and there was a new, near-frightening degree of intensity in his expression.

"I…just analyze what's wrong and stimulate the flesh to do what it would do normally, only faster."

"Did you…did you test this on anyone? Anyone other than yourself?"

Lana began to give him a furious denial, then looked him in the eye, bit her lip and looked at the table. "There was one man who was brought to us a year ago. He had multiple stab wounds, and had nearly bled out before we even got him on the table. He was well into shock. A hopeless case. My father and I…we wouldn't have been able to work fast enough to save him. He would have died. So I did what I could. He lived."

The alchemist pinned her with his gaze. Hunched over, muscles tense but dangerously still, he seemed to fill the room. "Did his appearance change at all? Did you…sacrifice anything to heal him?"

Lana gave him a look between anxiety and disbelief. "Of course his appearance changed. I sealed the holes in his guts. And I didn't 'sacrifice' anything, other than energy and time."

"His eyes didn't change color? Hair never darkened, skin never paled nor had any marks appear on it?"

"Well, there was a tattoo on his chest that was never the same after I healed him."

She looked on in shock as the man visibly paled. "Tattoo? Do you remember what it looked like? Can you describe it?" His tone made it less of a question and more a demand.

He seemed startled when she grinned. "Of course. I'll never forget it because it was so surreal. My father and I were cutting his shirt off, and suddenly there was Sidney Silverton staring up at us. I had the most terrible urge to laugh."

Al's face went comically slack. "Who?"

"Sidney Silverton. You know, the film star? She starred in _Wages of War_ a few years back. This guy had a tattoo of her across his chest. And I am _not_ going to describe to you what she was doing."

Al looked so bemused she had to struggle not to laugh at _him_. "Never heard of her."

Lana started to giggle in spite of herself. "Well, it's a pity you never saw this tattoo, then. You'd never forget her!"

Al stared at her for a moment, then slowly lowered his face into his hands. She looked at him in alarm as his shoulders began to shake. "Are you all right?"

It was only when his eyes smiled shakily at her through his fingers that she realized he had been laughing. "I am very, very confused. Unless I've missed something, you've set a major law of alchemy on its ear, in complete ignorance and without any negative repercussions. And I _really_ need to talk to my brother. Actually, _we_ really need to talk to my brother. How soon can everything you need to do be done if I help?"

It took a few phone calls to find Al's brother and arrange a time and place to meet with him. After that, they made swift and mostly silent work of her chores. Even so, the sun was beginning to sink in the sky when they finally finished and left for the city green. As they walked, Lana finally gathered herself to address the man striding with his hands in his pockets only a little ahead of her. "I know what you must think of me."

She continued hurriedly as he started, before she could lose her nerve. "I know that—well that body alchemy is considered taboo, but it seems that--" It was suddenly hard to meet the alchemist's steady gaze, and she lowered her eyes. "It seems that most of the interest in body alchemy is in resurrecting the dead or—or looking for immortality, and stupid things—" she looked back up at him even as he seemed to flinch slightly. "But I'm not here to toy with lives. I'm here to save them, to…to do _all_ I can to save them, any way that doesn't cause harm. All I've ever wanted to be is a doctor, so I could do that. So if you and your brother plan to censure me or call charges on me, I…" She hardened her face and looked away again. Her father's words rang clearly in her mind. _Lana, you have a gift. Use it. And don't you ever, ever apologize for it._

"Just leave my family out of it. They shouldn't answer for what I do."

"Miss Ashley." His hand was on her arm. She was surprised that it hadn't startled her.

"Miss Ashley, no one's going to give you any trouble if we can help it." He looked her straight in the eye as he spoke. "You have my word. I'm sure this is why Alex called us…and not someone else."

There was something in his expression when he said it that made a hundred questions rise in her throat…and die again, unasked. He turned again and walked forward, and she followed him.

The city green was wreathed in afternoon light when they finally reached it. This was what Lana had meant when she said there was only one other place in the city like her family's garden. Mayor Armstrong had set aside a rectangular plot of the old city square and raised a fountain in the center. It was said that he, with other alchemists, had taken vines, flowers and trees as seedlings from the western islands, the desert, every corner of Amestris and beyond, then grew them to maturity in a day. This garden was more of a marvel to her than the rest of the city combined. Its beauty was such that artists as well as alchemists and scientists came from as far as Aerugo and Xing to see it.

"Wow." Al looked up as they passed under the living archway of huge Creta walking oaks. A broad stone path wound through a glade of slim, dark pine trees with silvery, trailing needles. Large granite outcroppings jutted from the ground, perfectly imitating the environment the trees would have come from. The entire green was a condensed patchwork of the country and surrounding territory.

Al brushed his fingers along the bristles of one of the pine trees, astonishment painting his face. "I can't believe it. These trees…I think they're from the mountains around my home…"

"Looks kinda familiar, doesn't it?" came a voice from above, and suddenly a white flash of teeth in an upside-down face swung down like some arboreal goblin to grin at her, not a foot from her own face.

Al _leapt_ backwards. Arelana jumped and squeaked.

Once her heart stopped racing she recognized the owner of the upside-down smile as the shorter alchemist she had met earlier, dangling by his knees from a tree branch overhead. "You kids having fun?" he grinned, not seeming to realize, much less care, how ridiculous it was for a man of his apparent age to dangle out of trees.

It took a few false starts for Al to form words. "You are going to be very unhappy next time we spar, Brother. You just wait."

The man's long ponytail swung in a bright arc as he reached up, grasped the branch one-handed and unhooked his legs. He spun to face them as he dropped, still grinning, choosing to ignore his brother's comment. "Wait'll you see this, Al. Alex made…hell, just come look." The man bounced ahead of them.

Lana leaned in and whispered in Al's ear. "How much younger than you is your brother?"

She'd asked quietly, but Al's brother stiffened as though had she shouted. Beside her, Al snickered. "Actually, Brother's a year and a half _older_ than me. He's just—"

"Finish that sentence, Alphonse, and Winry gets a new customer. Got it?"

"—immature," Al finished, grinning into his brother's scowl. Then his face went slack as he caught sight of something beyond his brother's shoulder. "That…is that what I think it is?"

"That" was a fountain that stood at the center of a clearing. The shorter alchemist looked around. Half a second later his expression matched his brother's. "I meant the trees and the…the grass…Alex got the Tringhams to make it look like…back…home…son of a bitch…"

"I take it you didn't know about this either."

"Of course I didn't. Hell, Al, you know how…damn, that is…"

"Eerie."

"Yeah." Side by side, they gaped at the statue which made up the centerpiece of the fountain.

Lana didn't see what was so attention-grabbing about this particular fountain, so she moved closer. The statue was actually two statues, one towering over the other as they stood back-to-back. The taller figure appeared to be, incongruously, a suit of armor that stood almost seven feet. Its helmet was tilted skyward, hands turned up to the burning clouds. Its stance seemed to carry a wealth of emotion despite its lacking a face to express it. The second figure was less than half its size and breadth, a statue of a youth, short enough to be thirteen but with a face mature enough to be fifteen or sixteen. He too looked skyward, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his duster. It was in his expression that the mastery of whatever artisan that had rendered them was realized. His face was wistful, sad and so lifelike Lana almost thought if she glanced back suddenly she might catch the statue breathing.

Everyone in Lior knew of the now near-legendary Fullmetal Alchemist. Some credited him with their city's destruction, some for the civil war, some for the evacuation and salvation of its citizens. Whatever the case, Lana thought it was appropriate that his memorial should stand in a place that commemorated the death and rebirth of Lior.

She leaned in and read the plaque aloud. "Two Brothers Fountain. In honor of Edward and Alphonse Elric, alchemists for Lior and all of Amestris. We shall not forget their sacrifice. November eighth, 1917."

"_Scheisse_." The older brother's jaw hung slack for a moment before he somehow managed to grimace with his entire body, looking embarrassed beyond all endurance. "I'm gonna kill him. Bloody goddamn sentimental sasquatch…"

"Brother, watch your mouth. I apologize for my brother, Miss Ashley."

"Don't worry, I'm sure I've heard worse. I'm not even sure what he said."

"I sai—mmf!"

"I did warn you."

The shorter man shrugged loose of his brother and wrinkled his nose at him before turning incredulously back to the statue. "I can't believe Alex did this. Tringham must've laughed his ass off."

"It's not that bad…I guess. Was I really that much taller than you?"

"_No._" The shorter man's face was brick red.

Al laughed faintly, still looking at the statue. "You're such a liar. I think Alex did a good job, though." Al's voice went so low Lana could barely hear him. "It looks like you."

"It does not."

There wasn't any real heart in the protest, but Al continued. "Remember that time we showed Alex where our home used to stand? I'm sure he took image from that. You look so…sad."

Al's brother grimaced, though it had seemed to Lana that the cause this time was pain. "Well, yeah. I was afraid you hated my guts for what I'd done to you." The two men exchanged a smile that made Lana's heart catch. It melted from both faces as they seemed to recall that she was there.

"Well—"

"Um—"

"Wait," Arelana held up a hand, and both men took the hint and fell silent. "You two are saying—you are _the_ Elric brothers. The real ones." There was no lack of two-bit alchemists trying to pass themselves off as the long-lost Elrics in the East.

Al's—no, _Alphonse Elric_'s—apology was in his face. "Al is what my friends and family call me. I'm sorry I misled you, Miss Ashley."

Lana was still trying to understand how her city's lost saviors or possible destroyers could be standing before her, real as, well, life. "I thought…I'd heard that the Fullmetal Alchemist was killed. Not that anyone was certain how or when, but everyone seemed to agree that he—I mean _you--_" she corrected, "—had died."

The two men threw each other an unfathomable look before they turned back to her. "It's complicated," they said together.

Lana smiled as she remembered, and quietly slipped her hand into her husband's. "Complicated" was an apt description for the Elric brothers. When their first conversation together finally got away from who _they_ were and back to why Al was so desperate to speak with his brother after seeing her alchemy, the sun had already set. He related the incident to the national alchemist as they all retired to the rooms lent to high profile visitors at the Mayor's mansion (at Rose's suggestion and Alex's tearful insistence, at which the brothers had fallen all over each other to agree. They had no ambition to be enthusiastically squeezed into paste).

Al's older brother set three tumblers on the table and filled each with an amber liquor (she never touched it; the fumes alone made her eyes water) before seating himself again. Then, slowly, the two state alchemists recounted the…incidents…that had shaped them. It had been abbreviated, she knew. There was no explanation of their disappearance when she asked—not at that time, anyway—save for a thoughtful frown from the older brother and an apologetic smile from the younger, who quietly explained that it was far too long a story for that night.

What they gave her, bluntly and graphically, was a full account of the attempt they had made as children to resurrect their mother. What it had cost them…and the ultimate result of trying to recreate a life lost to the world.

_We're telling you this so that you know why Armstrong called us and where our knowledge comes from…but also so you understand how real the danger of body alchemy is, and how close you might have come to something truly unforgivable…_Al's brother had said that, absently flexing his exposed prosthetic hand.

The brothers had then speculated at her ability far into the night, while she listened and recounted the finer points of her alchemy, how she had first conceived of it and all the ways she had tested it. Al's brother—Ed, as he had requested she call him—had finally leapt out of his seat around one in the morning, yelling something about an alchemist called Kimbley. Al leapt up at his brother's shout, and the two of them babbled jargon back and forth excitedly, too fast for her to follow.

A flushed, triumphant Al had breathlessly explained that they knew of a man whose alchemic talent had been to rearrange the elements of a person's body without any alchemic rebound or other harmful effects—to himself at least. Al and his brother had been thrilled at solving their puzzle of how she performed healing alchemy. She shuddered, remembering the description of the particular type of alchemy the State Alchemist Kimbley had specialized in.

Alphonse surprised her back to the present by wrapping his strong, graceful fingers around her own. "Cold?" he asked. His eyes were still closed.

Lana smiled. "Hey there. I thought you were asleep."

"_Was_ asleep. Fading in and out. And thinking," Her husband answered drowsily. He opened his eyes halfway to peer through his lashes at her. Outside the rain had slackened, but the heavy clouds and pale pre-dawn light still painted the world dull and gray.

"About the chimera?" Her husband had shown her the array he and his brother had been working on. A copy now rested safely somewhere in his coat. She hoped it would work, for her husband's sake as well as the boy's. The boy himself was cocooned in Al's camp blanket and curled on his side on the bench across from them. The concealing wool rose and fell with his breathing.

"That too." He slumped a little further in his seat, brow furrowed.

She leaned in and nudged him with her shoulder. "Hey you. Talk to me."

"It's just…" Alphonse sighed. "Just wondering if I've made a mistake."

She frowned up at him concernedly. "In what? How so?"

"Just… this. Being here. Being in the military."

Lana shifted around until her head rested on his shoulder. Al sighed again and rested his cheek against the crown of her head, moving his arm around her shoulders to bring her snugly against him. "What is your heart telling you?" she asked quietly.

"I think…I don't know," he responded, just as quietly. "I don't regret taking the test in the first place; it freed me to search for Brother when he went missing in Aerugo. And I don't regret so much that we were separated, because it wouldn't have been fair for me to stay with him, not when we were needed all over the country. And I don't regret staying because we _were _needed, and I thought I could accomplish more with a state certification, and that I could take some of the burden off of my brother…" Alphonse lifted his head from hers and stared outside again. Lana remained still, except to squeeze his hand more tightly.

"Then when they promoted me, I thought at first that I'd have more autonomy, and I did, but having my own group…after they did that, all my energy went into protecting the people I'd been entrusted with. I lost sight of why I was there in the first place, Arei."

Only Alphonse ever shortened her name like that; it was a private thing, like his name being shortened to "Al." This doubt was something he had voiced only to her, something he had not spoken of even with his brother.

"I'm starting to think that, in the end, I've defeated what I intended to do." He spoke the last so softly that Arelana wasn't certain her husband intended for her to hear.

"How can you say that?" Lana's throat tightened on the words. Her husband had laid his life and his future on the line to make the bargain that chained him to the military and freed him to save his brother in the same breath. She had defied orders and defied _him_ to follow him after his missing brother. No one could know Alphonse for a day and not realize that if Edward were in danger, the last person he would think about was himself. She had known, and had fought his need to protect her tooth and nail to stay beside him. "Alphonse, you saved your brother's _life_."

Eyes closed, her husband pressed his lips to her forehead and replied quietly—"Yes. _We _did"— before looking out the window again. "But no one could do the things that Brother could do until I enlisted. Now that two of us are serving…I wonder if it's one too many." Al's voice dropped even lower. His eyes found the bundle that was the chimera and narrowed. "There's already been one attempt on him from inside the military, Lana, and we know it had to be someone high up who betrayed him to the Aerugans. With me around, whoever they are might conceivably gather more people to their side simply because the Fullmetal Alchemist isn't unique, and he's _never_ let them manipulate him. I don't want them to be able to use me against him."

"And I _don't_ trust Brother to tell me if there have been other attempts. He never wants anyone to worry, but he's always throwing himself at trouble, Lana. It's as though whatever he does can never be enough. He's not so reckless anymore—comparatively, anyway—" Lana's husband amended quickly when she raised an eyebrow. "Also the Colonel—I mean, General Mustang—he's always protected us and always will, I think. But Brother's still so…"

"Driven," his wife supplied.

"Yes. They take advantage of him, Arei, they really do…" Al trailed off, looking at her. "He should have been able to come home, marry Winry, and raise the kids in peace. He was so ready to be finished with it all, and then they told him he had to come back…as though he hadn't already done more than enough…" A rare flash of true anger crossed her husband's face. "They have no idea what he's already been through. What he did for this world. And they had the unmitigated gall to suggest he deserted…" Al's voice trailed off as he turned to grimace at his reflection. It was an old rant. He didn't need to subject his wife to it again.

"You think that if you leave, he might be better off? Or that he might be able to follow?" Arelana asked softly.

"…Maybe." Her husband said. "Just maybe. I just don't want him in danger anymore. Not if I've got any way to keep him out of it," he added, almost under his breath.

"Honestly, though, the other thing is that … I mean, I finally figured out …"

His sudden, tired laugh made his wife start. "Figured out what?"

Al's face folded, causing him to suddenly and startlingly look all of his thirty-one years. "I'm not cut out for this, Lana. Watching people die, and being responsible for their deaths…" Alphonse looked at his hands, which had clenched themselves in his lap. "I feel like little pieces of me are going hard and dropping off. The first few weeks after Tocker and Ellis were transferred I barely talked to them until Connor…pointed out to me what I was doing. I was afraid I'd get them killed too and I didn't want…I _wanted_ to be numb. I didn't want to be hurt by their deaths, because if I let it hurt I might not be able to function well enough to keep the rest of my team safe. And it's not just them. One slip in control and I could kill people so easily…without ever trying."

Lana had seen her husband strained and haunted by the battlefield, but she had never before seen his fear lying so close to the surface. "I want to help people, and save lives…but I can't do it this way. I can't allow myself to do this anymore. Death should hurt; you can't be a human being if it doesn't…and no one can afford a state alchemist who's forgotten to be human. I won't wait for myself to turn into Kimbley. It's just…it's wrong for me. And for them."

He laughed again, soft and sad. "I guess… that this is something I'll always be a child about."

Lana's embrace turned fierce as she shook her head in denial. "Idiot. If you're a child, then the rest of us are babes in arms."

She pulled back slightly to look him in the eye. "I'm a doctor, Alphonse, and so is my father. He used to talk to me about empathy making someone the best and the worst surgeon. You have to understand beyond just the physical problem, understand the pain and the fear, and try to treat that too. But in return it becomes your pain, and hardens your heart while you're not watching. Keeping that empathy, keeping hold of who you are and refusing to kill it by killing other people…no one will ever convince me that this is a bad thing."

Lana placed her hand on her husband's chest, over his heart. "You and your brother went through everything without compromising who you are. You'll never be Kimbley, whether you resign or not."

Her husband's brow tightened, hooding his eyes before he closed them tightly. "I'm not so sure."

"Well, _I_ am." She tweaked his nose lightly. "And you should know by now that I'm always right."

"Mm." She was relieved to see her husband's grim expression shift into something brighter as he leaned down to brush his lips against her forehead. "How did I manage to fall in love with someone so wise, but still willing to marry me?"

She brought her chin up to murmur against his mouth. "Flatterer. Don't tell me you weren't thinking the same thing."

"Mmf. But it's better to have someone wiser confirm it." His head dropped until his chin rested on her shoulder.

She turned her face into his neck, enjoying the warmth and the scent of him. "So, what will you do?"

"Mm." Al's forehead wrinkled thoughtfully as he stared out of the window. "The first thing is to make sure there's some other job for alchemists which allows them to be at least as effective at helping people. Senator Grumman's petition to put national alchemists at the disposal of the Congress and not the military might be a good place to start. Even the most conservative military personnel have to see that forcing an incompetent alchemist into command is just as bad as giving the position to someone inexperienced. Having alchemists promoted directly to Major…that worked for Brother, but I've seen other people since that didn't handle it well. And then I have to make sure my subordinates are transferred to someone I trust…and then there are the chimeras." He looked back at the sleeping boy as his arms tightened around her. "I have to see what can be done for Badenmeyer, his men and this little guy before I can think of leaving."

"I understand. Beloved, I think this is the right decision."

"Well, Brother will be happy, anyway." Al smiled ruefully. "You know, I just found out he's been declining promotions for six years now."

Arelana frowned. "He was? Do you know why? I would have thought your brother would be happy with a higher rank and more leeway."

"I don't _know_, but I have a good guess. Brother promised he wouldn't interfere with my decision to join the military or use his influence to protect me. He's certainly remaining a colonel deliberately; he may have been trying to give me the space I asked for." Al smiled.

"You mean the space you practically had to pound his head in to get, since he was so bent on protecting you while you were still a major." She grinned at him. "I was there for that little dispute, remember."

"Ha. That's true." The weight of his head left her shoulder abruptly. "We're slowing down. We must be pulling into Dublith." Alphonse consulted his silver watch and frowned. "We don't have time to see Sig before the train to Central comes through. And it's the only one that gets there today."

Lana smiled sympathetically. She liked Mr. Curtis very much. The huge bear of a man spoke little but treated their children as beloved grandsons and Al as a favored son. "We'll make it up to him the next time we visit. I'm sure he'll understand." Al nodded his agreement. He stood and stretched as the train ground to a halt, his eyes tearing as he covered a yawn. "We've got about ten minutes before our train arrives. Would you like to walk around the station with me?"

"What about our little friend here?" Lana pointed at the sleeping child. "Do you think he could stand to stretch his legs?"

"I don't think so. We won't be here too long. Let him sleep."

Arelana smiled and hooked her hands around his arm. "Lead on, fearless leader."

Her husband gave her a bemused look. "'Fearless leader'?"

Lana grinned. "Didn't you know? Your subordinates have given you another name. _I_ think it suits you very well."

Al made a face. "It must have been Lane. It sounds like his sense of humor."

As they walked, she added, "I wouldn't bother to call him on it. His embarrassment should keep him in line for a while."

Her husband's eyebrows threatened to climb into his hairline. "Embarrassment? _Lane_? Are we talking about the same person?"

As they stepped off the train, Al's words echoed back into the compartment, making heads turn in surprise.

"He said _what_?"

---------

"Anyway, it was just a misunderstanding." She patted his shoulder reasurringly.

"Even so, I'm tempted to stick him with latrine duty for a month or so. With Connor overseeing him. Lane wouldn't get a moment's peace."

"Connor is your field medic, right? The curly-headed one who sounds so dry all the time? I didn't know you had such a cruel streak."

Al chuckled. "That's what I would be _tempted_ to do—if you hadn't squished him worse than I ever could…" Her husband whipped his head around abruptly, his eyes scanning the station entrance.

"What is it?"

"Just for a second, I thought I heard..."

Al turned and trotted back toward the entrance. Puzzled, Lana followed him until she caught the sound that must have drawn his attention. "Oh…" she murmured, thinking, _Of course. What else?_

Alphonse stood by the arching doorway of the station, conversing with a pair of youngsters alike enough to be siblings. Between them she could make out a box marked with a childish scrawl: "Kittens 4 free to good Home." When she came up to them Al already had a ball of stripy gray fluff cradled in one hand, purring so loudly it was a wonder its tiny body didn't shake apart. It wrapped needle claws around his fingers when he stroked its belly with a gentle thumb, but he only laughed.

He caught sight of her at his shoulder and held out the kitten for her inspection. "Lana, look!"

She looked at the proffered ball of fluff, then back up at her husband, quirking an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to do something with this?"

Al set the kitten in her hands, smiling in that helpless way he had around anything small and cute. Rick and Louis had certainly used this vulnerability to their advantage when they begged for extra helpings of dessert. Her husband plucked another kitten from the box and stroked its ears until its internal motor roared to life as well. "I thought we could take them for the Aerugan orphans we found. I wanted to check on them when we get to Central, and I thought it'd be nice to bring them something."

"Oh? And where are you proposing these kittens stay when they're not at the hospital? I doubt very much that the staff allows patients to have pets."

"Aheh, well…" Her husband rubbed sheepishly at the back of his head. "I was hoping we might…"

Lana sighed in a long-suffering manner and turned to the two children. "Would you take ten cens for all of them?"

"Ah…" The children looked at each other, then back at her. "Um, we're giving them away for free."

"You have to treat them nice, though!" the smaller one piped.

"Oh, rest assured they'll be spoiled rotten." Lana handed them the money anyway. She rolled her eyes toward her husband, who had brought the two remaining kittens out of their box to join the one in he already held. He caught her eyes on him, watching them all while the kittens scaled boldly up and down his shirtsleeves, and smiled his sweet, effortless smile. She was no more immune to that smile now than she had been eight years ago. _How can I, who would go anywhere and through anything for you, refuse you something that makes you happy, and is so easily granted?_

"These are your brats," she intoned, leveling the index finger of her free hand at him. "Not mine. I'm not cleaning your clothes when they spit up on you." She smiled wickedly. "And I'm definitely not changing their diapers."

Al laughed merrily. "Deal."

Looking at him, Lana's expression softened into something more tender. "Actually, speaking of brats, there was something I wanted to tell you—"

The sudden piercing shriek of the train whistle made her break off with a start.

"Oh no! The train!" Al gathered the kittens into their box, grabbed her hand and sprinted for the platform. It was as the train station disappeared behind the horizon that the clouds broke, allowing the thin pale rays of morning sun to reach them at last. Al was asleep once again, lulled by the rocking of the train. Three of the four kittens were curled in a single mound of fur, resting atop the cloak Al had spread across his lap. The orange kitten, dissatisfied with its offered bed, scaled its benefactor's shirt until it found a suitably lofty perch under Al's chin. It curled there, kneading his shoulder contentedly and purring at the top of its little lungs as the train thundered northward. It didn't begrudge the head of longer, darker fur that joined it on the claimed shoulder a few minutes later. It merely purred into the available ear and nuzzled the more slender, but no less gentle hand as it obligingly rubbed its ears. "I guess we'll tell him later, huh?" The kitten purred itself into exhaustion and fell asleep. Not long after, Arelana followed.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Masked Intent

Back in Riesembul, Winry smiled and hung up the phone as Mustang did the same. It was going to be nice to stay in Central for something other than a crisis or work. _Need to get new clothes for the kids…and Ed, too,_ she reminded herself._ Won't _that_ be fun._

Ed didn't usually mind being the designated pack mule when it came to shopping expeditions for herself or the kids. She could even count on him for a decent opinion on how a dress fit or a color looked. But contrary to all logic, Ed loathed shopping for himself.

There had been two notable episodes in the ten years they had been married that she actually managed to browbeat Ed into getting some clothes, and even then only because Al had been dragged along to suffer with him. Both events were due his managing to ruin a trunk of belongings in some military escapade. She had found the burned remains of Ed's first suitcase stuffed into a closet in their house at Central, and had to badger him the entire day before he would admit to being assaulted by an alchemist when he got off the train to Drachmar. The suitcase and every stitch of clothing in it had been sacrificed as a shield. The second time he made sure he disposed of the remains before she could find them. It had been the sudden abundance of empty hangers on his side of the closet that tipped her off. That one he wouldn't discuss no matter what she threatened him with, which conjured even more dire possibilities in Winry's mind…

She pushed the anxious memories aside in favor of the convention. Even if the whole affair bored her to tears, having cause for everyone to enjoy a pleasant, lazy day together would be more than worth it. Mustang had described the event briefly before he'd hung up (thought not before she caught Ed's bellow of displeasure). The first part was an afternoon exhibition of alchemy for children to enter in and compete against each other for prizes, something the kids were sure to love. The second part was centered more on the adults, an evening of dinner and dancing where the winners of the competition would be announced. She resolved to enjoy every moment of it, right down to Ed's inevitable grousing. The whole family was actually in one place at one time so rarely, despite the fact that Amestris currently enjoyed a period of relative peace, that having him around even to complain would be something.

As she wandered back down the stairs she indulged a daydream of herself in a nice evening gown, dancing with Ed. _Ed in a new_ _suit_ she corrected the image_--and enjoying himself, while I'm dreaming_, she thought with a rueful chuckle. She had just seated herself at the workbench when there was a knock at the door.

"Never fails…" Winry sighed. She turned and yelled up the stairs. "Will! Lou! Can one of you see who it is?"

Almost immediately the thunder of at least two pairs of feet could be heard on the stairs. "We'll go!" one of the boys yelled back.

The sound of the door being opened filtered through the floorboards, followed by the murmuring of two voices, one of the boys and another she didn't recognize. Winry was already halfway up the stairs when her oldest son shouted. "Mom! There's a lady here to see you."

"Thank you, sweetheart," she called back. When Winry reached the living room, all four boys were clustered around a woman she didn't recognize.

"You don't have any automail. Why are you here?" William demanded curiously. He'd been looking for the telltale sheen of metal limbs that accompanied strangers to their door.

"William Curtis! Don't be rude," his mother admonished, reaching down to cuff her son lightly. Winry looked back to the woman at the door and smiled apologetically. "Sorry about that. They're used to seeing my clients." She looked at the woman, taking in her expensive clothes, shoes, pale, china-fine skin and soft hands. Winry was suddenly very aware of her grimy, scarred and calloused fingers and the equally grimy coverall knotted around her waist, bearing her midriff and shoulders. She saw the woman take in the machine oil and graphite all the way up her arms, even the one embarrassing streak across her chest. Winry drew herself up proudly under the scrutiny. She hoped this was a client who knew the reputation of Rockbell Automail, but if a person couldn't look past the appearance to the quality, as Granny would have said, they weren't worth troubling with. There was as much challenge as explanation when she said: "Sorry about my clothes. I was working."

"Please don't worry about it," the woman smiled, showing a thin line of very white teeth. "My name is Abigail Merel. May I come in?"

"Sure." Winry smiled with the bluff, easy courtesy that set people at ease and bypassed the caginess that so many automail users developed in the face of other people's leeriness. "Why don't you have a seat at the table outside? I'll wash up and be right with you." She turned to the assorted children. "Guys? Why don't you make yourselves lunch and we'll all go outside to eat. That is, if you haven't already, Ms. Merel?" She turned a friendly smile on the woman as the boys stampeded into the kitchen.

"I ate on the train, thank you. But I don't mind if you do." Abigail Merel smiled brightly, charmingly, but the expression struck an odd note in Winry's mind. It seemed…false; painted on somehow. The woman's eyes didn't change at all. Winry kept her own smile firmly in place. You couldn't always pick your clients, and it wasn't her job to judge people. Unless they gave her real cause to refuse them, she always did her best by those who came to her for their automail needs. There had been plenty of guys in Rush Valley that made her edgy, but she had yet to serve a client who was dissatisfied with her work at the finish.

"I'm having tomatoes and cheese!" a voice announced suddenly from the kitchen.

"That's nasty, Rick!"

"Not as nasty as applesand_ cream_ cheese, Will!"

"Cream cheese and apples are good! Oi, Niko, don't touch that, that's mine!"

"You're hogging all the strawberries!"

Winry made a face. "Do I have to come in there?" she yelled over her shoulder.

"No!" four voices hollered back in unison.

"Sheesh…" She turned back to Merel with a wry smile. "See what kids do to you? My _granny_ used to say things like that. Now I catch myself doing it all the…" Winry trailed off as she caught sight of the other woman's expression. While the kids were bickering the mask-like smile had slipped, exposing something…raw, but also…hateful.

She found herself between the stranger and the kitchen door with no memory of having moved.

Merel caught her expression and laughed politely, her face snapping back to pleasant blankness so fast that Winry almost thought she had imagined the change. "Shall we go outside?"

"After you," Winry said, opening the door. Her eyes followed Merel out.

Once the two women were settled at the table on the porch and the boys were munching their assorted messes on the steps, Ms. Merel spoke again.

"To tell the truth, I'm not here to order automail. I'm a reporter for _Central Distributed_. I'm doing a piece on the Fullmetal Alchemist, and I was hoping you would contribute to the article."

"An article on Ed?" Winry looked at the other woman, surprised. "Well, I suppose I could…" She was ahead on her work, and she didn't have any appointments scheduled for the rest of the week. Edward wouldn't mind, surely…? It would be nice see at least one story coming from a better source than rumor and speculation. He had hated the last article _Central Distributed_ had printed about him. Among other false claims, it had declared that Al had been a steam-powered bodyguard assigned to him due to his youth. Ed had been so furious, in fact, that he paid a visit to the editor in person. He hadn't told Winry exactly what he'd done (not yet, anyway), but he returned home looking deeply satisfied with himself. It was weeks later that she heard from Riza about the restraining order banning the Fullmetal Alchemist henceforth from all branches of the _Central Distributed_.

"Sure," Winry smiled. "What do you want to know?"

"Would you like to start with how you met?"

"Well, we grew up together. Ed, Al—that's Ed's younger brother, he's also a State Alchemist—they and I lived next door to each other since we were born. When their mom died my grandmother looked after them." For a moment she could see them, Ed hunched and staring, tears streaking Al's face as they stood over their mother's grave. After that there had been distance between them all, both boys barreling off home after school, coming for dinner with her and Granny but always returning to that empty house…she had thought they just missed their mother; it was natural, she had missed Auntie Trisha too, as well as her own mother and father. She had never even guessed that they were…not until it was too late, anyway.

_But we made it anyway, didn't we?_ she thought, defying the old pain. _We made it. All of us, and in spite of everything..._

"How old were they?" Merel questioned, interrupting her thoughts.

"Ed was eight and Al was just seven. Their father had left a long time before that, though."

"Mmm." Merel bit her pen thoughtfully. "Very young. How old were they when they started alchemy?"

"Oh, it was years before that. They made a doll for my sixth birthday with alchemy. I'd never seen it done before, so I was a little scared," Winry confessed, blushing slightly. "Now I don't blink even when one of our kids does it."

"You mentioned that your grandmother took care of them after that. Your parents had died by then?"

"Yes." Winry responded automatically, and then wondered how the woman had known her parents were no longer alive.

"Killed by our own side, apparently. During the Ishbal Rebellion."

Winry's head snapped around to see Merel's eyes boring into her, watching for her reaction.

Stiff with shock, Winry stared at her. "How could you possibly know that?" she whispered.

"I'm sorry, but I cannot disclose my sources. A state alchemist, one Major Mustang was responsible. He was never tried." The pale eyes were searching her own, digging for something she didn't comprehend.

Winry said nothing. She stared blankly, feeling as though she'd been punched and had never even seen the fist that hit her.

"Mama?" Niko's voice came from behind her. She glanced back, realizing that the all four boys had gone abnormally silent. Her youngest son's wide, astonishingly blue eyes watched her worriedly, along with his brother and cousins.

"Are you okay, Mom?" William frowned. He stood up and moved forward until he stood only a few feet behind her, glaring at the stranger. Will was a bit tall for his age, gray-eyed, and possessed of a paler shade to his thatch of bangs, but otherwise he was the spitting image of his father as a belligerent seven-year-old. Will's tone and stance stated clearly, were his mother not okay, the person responsible was about to become very unhappy.

"I'm fine." Winry tried to force a reassuring smile for them.

The piercing summons of the telephone shattered the silence. Winry jumped, but mentally showered the caller with praise for the distraction they had provided.

"I'll get it!" With a parting glare at the strange woman, Will vanished into the house.

It had given his mother a moment to recover. She thought briefly of calling Will back and making some excuse to answer it herself, but discarded the impulse. It felt too much like cowardice.

"Can we please talk about something else?" Winry was pleased at that her voice remained even. "Sorry, but I'm not comfortable talking about this…"

"But you already knew about General Mustang." It wasn't a question. And Merel was still staring at her like a bug on a plate.

Cornered, Winry was beginning to feel the edge of her own formidable temper. "Look, I told you…" She trailed off as Will's one-sided conversation became audible. "…strange lady here. I think she's upsetting Mom." Winry tried not to flush as Will continued talking, unaware that his conversation was being overheard.

"What's she look like? Um, she's wearing all blue, and has these long, red fingernails—I dunno what her name is…"

Will came around the door, holding the receiver for his mother to take. "Dad wants to talk to you."

"Win?" Ed's voice came through clearly. "The woman with you—is her name Merel?"

"Yes. Ed—what is this about? Do you know her?"

"We've met." The anger in his voice made Winry's eyes dart to the stranger. Merel gazed back impassively, still wearing her bland, untroubled smile. _What on earth could she have done to make Ed that furious…?_ She frowned.

"Winry, you should tell her to leave." Her husband sounded as though he were talking through clenched teeth.

"I'm not doing anything until you tell me what this is about." Winry snapped back. She didn't know what was going on, but she would eat her wrench if this Merel person was truly after a story. Her feelings were bleeding into her voice as irritation and Ed, like as not, was a convenient target. She was out of her seat and pacing now, phone cord trailing behind her. When she reached the far end of the porch, she added under her breath "Ed, she knows about…she knows things no one should know."

Winry heard her husband suck in a breath. "Your parents?"

She nodded, then remembered Ed couldn't see her. "Yes. Ed, how--?"

A short, obscene hiss cut her off. "Give her the phone." Ed wasn't even attempting to hide his anger. "Winry, please hand the phone over to her. Believe me, she's got it coming."

Winry looked at Merel, considering it. The woman looked from her to the phone, her smile twisting. She took her time retrieving her purse from the chair as she stood, apparently unconcerned with the demand issuing from the phone. "Your husband wants to speak to me?"

Winry lowered her hand, ignoring the tinny sound of Ed's voice filtering through the speaker.

"What do you want?" she demanded bluntly. Her voice was sharp enough now to shave steel, and she stood with the receiver fisted in her fingers. Merel's false smile melted, but she didn't flinch from the other woman's anger.

She matched Winry stare for stare as she answered. "To expose the truth behind what happened at Lior.

"Which I will accomplish. No matter what." The woman's pale gaze burned in a face made harsh with pain and resolve.

Winry knew that look. She had seen it before, in the faces of the two men she loved most in the world. Only one thing caused it. "Who did you lose there?" she asked softly.

The pale woman looked away, her face utterly devoid of expression. After a long silence she said, "That's no business of yours."

"No business of mine." Winry echoed flatly. _No business of mine._ Her husband had yet to return home from any major campaign unscathed. There were parts of Edward Elric that were more scar tissue than skin. There had been instances when a sudden sharp sound would make him start up from a book or a doze to crouch wild-eyed, searching for a threat that wasn't there. There were nights that he screamed in his sleep and there were days when his spirit retreated further than she could follow, deep within the tangle of shadows behind his eyes. Days he fell so far down in some secret hurt that Winry feared one day she might lose him to it forever.

_And you say that it's no business of mine?_ _You DARE?_

Suddenly the reporter's purpose in Riesembul was all too clear. And Winry was angry. No, forget angry; she was furious.

_There is nothing that threatens Edward Elric that is not my business, woman._

Winry strode forward until she was nearly nose to nose with the taller woman. "It's fine for you to pry into my private life but you aren't willing to tell me why before you get me talking? It's fine for you to disrupt my work and interfere with my family? You—" Winry bit down on the shout, hard, then took a deep breath and plowed on, eyes never wavering from the woman's stare

"You know something? You aren't out for the truth. I don't know what the hell you want, I don't know if you're out for some kind of misconceived revenge, or if coming to _my home_ and pulling this is your sick sense of justice, but I'll tell you something…"

"My husband and his brother _risked their lives_ to save Amestris. To save this country and everyone in it, they knowingly stranded themselves with no hope of getting back. Maybe you don't care that Edward Elric had more courage at twelve than most men show in their entire lives, but if you're trying to use him as some scapegoat for a disaster _he would have died to prevent_, you can go to _hell_."

Eyes blazing, arms folded, Winry was formidable in a way only her family and her clients might have suspected. "Now_ get off my property_."

Without a word, Merel turned and walked past the clustered children and out onto the road. When she was ten yards from the porch, she whirled suddenly to face the house. Her skin was flushed, and she was shaking as she shouted.

"I hope your husband's courage comforts you when he's jailed for his crimes!" Her voice cracked with spite, bitterness and—beneath it all—pain.

The younger boys jumped, upset by the woman's tone, but William growled and reached into his pocket.

"Oh no you don't!" Winry snatched the chalk out of her son's hand. "And _you_--" she jabbed a stiff finger in Merel's direction. "You move _now_, or jail will be a picnic compared to what _I_ do to you."

Tightlipped and unblinking in the face of Winry's anger, Merel spun on her heel and stalked down the road. Winry leveled her glare at her oldest son, who flinched but stared stubbornly back. Facing defiance on all sides, Winry realized that the phone she was clutching had lain quiet during the entire exchange.

Winry thrust the receiver to her ear. "_Did you hear all of that_?" she bellowed into it.

"I—Winry…" for once, Ed seemed at a loss for words.

"Well?" Winry almost wished Merel had dared to stick around. She wanted to yell at _someone_, but she didn't want to be angry with Ed.

"Don't deserve you." He whispered quietly, prayerfully, almost as though he were reminding himself.

Those three words sucked her anger away as though they had lanced poison from a wound. Winry felt her throat close as her vision blurred. She opened her eyes wide to force the tears back, her smile glorious and terrible, mixing sorrow and pain and passion with fierce love.

"Love you, alchemy geek." It was explanation and rebuke. _We deserve _each other_, you idiot. We'd have driven anyone else insane._

There was a pause, as though Ed were working around a lump in his own throat.

"Love you, automail geek," he returned roughly. "You're coming to Central tomorrow? Roy said this alchemy convention is in two days."

"I'll be on the noon train tomorrow."

"Al's train comes in at eleven. So we'll have to wait for you for a change." Ed's tone was wry with irony.

Winry laughed.

----------

The smokeless chimneys and slate roofs of Central burned bright as the sun fell behind them, and the day finally conceded to a calm spring night.

In the Library district was a house which often stood dark and empty. That night, however, lamps winked cheerfully in the street level windows, and receding fingers of bloody light picked out a man before the door, catching his hair and setting it ablaze as he stared westward, toward the light-etched lines and charcoal shadows of inner Central.

Coming from about as far out in hickdom as was possible and still be Amestrian territory, Edward Elric had never thought he'd know greater cities than Central in his travels. But he'd lived to see Central outshone by London, Berlin, Boston, and New York. Especially the last; he and Al had been struck dumb by the young metropolis, overwhelmed by its noise, its lights, and its cloud-shearing fingers of steel and glass. The first gift Edward had made his brother after crossing the Atlantic Ocean was half an hour on top of the tallest structure ever made by men.

He chuckled to himself as he shifted his weight on the stone lip of the steps, recalling how he and Al had scared the life out of one of the foreign city's many tour guides by sitting up on a barricade and swinging their feet over several hundred feet of empty air.

They had pretended not to understand English or the guide's repeated gestures that they remove themselves from the wall. Instead they pointed through the bars at a skyscraper being erected not a mile away and speculated on its construction in pointed German. They spent the time between the tour guide's flouncing departure and the arrival of the security guard debating happily on whether or not a structure of that size required a different variety of steel to support it. They never had bothered to ask—the answer was afterthought to the argument.

Every city Edward had known held one thing in common: they never truly slept. Not like the countryside. Not like Riesembul. Here in Central, there were only scattered pockets of peace to be found in quiet, secluded corners, or in the small hours of the night.

Not that he minded; city life had become a habit while he and Al chased Nuskisson's uranium weapon through Germany. It was far easier to be a hunter when you were concealed from those who hunted you, and what better place to hide than buried beneath a population of thousands? Finding them would have been as sifting for two grains of sand in a desert; a pair of aliens indiscernible among a dispossessed multitude.

A decade after he returned from that world, Edward wasn't certain if he had made Central a second home because it was convenient for his work, or because it offered the concealment of a sheaf of paper in a library, or a tree within a forest. Credit for that, like their homecoming, was owed in large part to Roy Mustang.

It had taken a creative bit of paperwork on the part of the newly re-commissioned brigadier general for Edward's stipend to continue being entered into his accounts after his second disappearance in 1917.

The military bureaucracy had let it pass, mostly because they had learned not to argue with the general the first time Major Elric disappeared. Mustang had not allowed the clerical staff to so much as sort through the few scattered belongings left in his locker and dorm, as was standard protocol after an officer's death. In fact, the clerks had been ordered crisply to drop the major's effects in his office and clear out. Something about the way the blond officer at his side fingered her pistol had convinced them not to pursue the matter.

Mustang had argued after both brothers' disappearance that, because the Fullmetal Alchemist was sighted again when the gate opened in 1917, the military was unable to halt his pension until another requisite period of seven years had passed and his status was changed from "missing in action" to "believed dead". For his insistence, Mustang had accepted extreme scrutiny over his own and Edward's finances for signs of his exploiting the situation, and his monitors were left scratching their heads when none were found. The general's ferocity over the manner was dismissed as an overly sentimental but unfortunately legal allocation of government funds, all of which would eventually return to their hands.

So a decent sum of money had awaited the Elric brothers when they finally returned to the life they left behind them. A _very_ decent sum of money; Ed's mouth had fallen open when the general gave a conservative estimate of the amount that had accumulated.

"I hear that the housing around the Central Library is at a premium." Roy had offered, smirking as Ed struggled pry his jaw off the floor. He carelessly tossed the younger man the keys to a deposit box. "Be sure to spend it all in one place."

The newly reappointed major had caught the keys purely out of reflex and stared at his commanding officer. Then he grimaced, tossed the keys once and snatched them out of the air. "Sounds like good advice," Edward said. Incredibly, the younger alchemist forgot to add his customary "Colonel Shit", though probably out of astonishment, Roy had mused, rather than gratitude.

So when the Fullmetal Alchemist snapped his first (and so far, only) sincere salute of his entire military career to the Flame Alchemist in full view of his fellow officers, it was understandable that even a veteran commander of Roy's vast experience and composure might fail to completely contain his surprise.

Edward had held the salute, deriving a certain amount of evil glee from the widening of a sole dark eye. With a last cocky flash of his teeth he practically pirouetted from the room, red duster sweeping in his wake. Alphonse had looked as though he were straining mightily to contain his laughter as he bowed hastily and followed.

Ed leaned back against the smooth coolness of the stair behind him, his grin a white slash in the dusk. Really, he had given Mustang so much shit when he was younger—not that he didn't _now_, of course, but he hadn't ever…appreciated it…before he left. He laughed to himself. Before Munich, he would never have seen being rude as a luxury. Well, it hadn't been Munich so much as getting nabbed in London…

Hijacked by that train of thought to a time that he wished with all his soul he could forget, Edward didn't reply until his daughter called him for the third time.

A slow count of thirty loosened Ed's throat enough to clear it loudly enough that his daughter could hear.

Another moment saw the ugly memory kicked back into its oubliette. "I'm out on the steps, Tri."

Edward listened to the thump of approaching feet and watched the street lights wink to life between the trees and thought: _Fear should be a sin_.

Grateful for the distraction Trisha had provided, Edward forced his face into something that wouldn't scare children and his thoughts to better things, like her mother. When he had phoned Winry to say goodnight, she let him know that Al had checked in and would meet him in the morning, earlier than they had planned. Ed unbraided his hair one-handed and raked his fingers through it absently. Winry had sounded tired, and no wonder; she'd had all five of the kids to manage for a solid week that he, Al, and Lana had been gone. His three days spent at home had hardly been a respite for either of them. Plotting how to make sure they _both_ got a break when Winry arrived brought a genuine smile to his face.

But until her arrival he was content to wait—and this was no bad place to wait in.

A thin sliver of light split the dimming yard before a shadow obscured half its length. Edward's smile broadened as he reflected that the company wasn't bad here, either.

"There you are." Trisha shut the door behind herself and stepped around her father's planted feet, settling pointedly between his knees with her back to him.

Ed had to smile at the scolding implicit in his daughter's tone. "Did I go somewhere?" he teased. Trisha's hair was still plastered into damp bronze locks. Edward could smell the lemon oil soap he had brought back from Xenotime.

Instead of answering in kind, Trisha tilted her head back until she was frowning thoughtfully into his face. "Maybe," she said solemnly.

She might have caught something in his expression then, old pain or old shields slamming into place, but Trisha leaned back against her father's chest and left it alone. "Tell me another story, Dad. Please?" She made her tone just whiny enough to annoy him out of his somber mood.

Her father smiled crookedly, closing his eyes. _My wise girl_.He thought. _Just like her mom._

"Your head's all wet," Ed complained by way of reply, adding: "And aren't you tired _yet_?"

Trisha grinned. They both knew his exasperation was strictly for show. It was part of the game to argue him into something he wanted to do in the first place. Edward, for his part, liked telling his children about his and Al's adventures, and didn't plan on letting his offspring tire of the novelty before he did. They were growing up too fast as it was.

"I've already told you two stories tonight. You said you'd go to sleep after the second one, Tri," her father reminded. His tone mimicked her own imploring whine as he supplicated the sky: "My daughter pulls me out of bed at the crack of dawn and then keeps me up all night telling her stories. What did I do to deserve this?"

His daughter sprawled across his lap and grinned up at him, reassured by the banter. "Must've been bad, Dad!"

Her unsuspecting foot was suddenly pounced upon by a stealthy steel hand, pulling it into easy reach by the ankle. Trisha was lifted and spun around so that she hung backwards over Edward's knee. When her father tickled the captured limb she was unable to do anything about it except flail and laugh.

"Hee hee—ahh! Gonna fall _off_, ah HA HA—yahhh--!"

"And just what do you think you know about being bad, brat?" her father growled playfully.

"Ah! Ah ha ha! Mom says that—_hey_! Hee hee quit it!—that when I grow up I'm going to have a kid just like me, and then I'll regret what I put her through! Agh! _No-don't-not-there-_AHH! AH HA HA HA--!"

"That's appropriate. I think I like that idea. You get to chase a kid around and I get to watch and laugh. Maybe by then you'll be worn out enough to let me sleep in peace."

Trisha shook her head breathlessly, her grin turning fiendish. "But if—agh!—if Mom's right, and that's what happens when you have kids, then you must have gotten me because I'm just like you, so you deserve what you got! So I get a story." Red-faced and upside down, his daughter crossed her arms and smirked up at him over this convoluted piece of logic.

Ed grinned and decided to acknowledge his "defeat", pulling her back against his chest. It delighted him more than he would ever admit that his daughter had yet to be embarrassed at being hugged, as older children inevitably did. _He_ would certainly never tire of it. "All right, but this is the _last_ one, and I'm serious this time. If I don't wake up in time to meet your uncle he'll never let me hear the end of it. Which story did you want?"

"The one about when Niko was born. That's a good one."

"Aw, Tri, I've told that one a thousand times. Besides, you were old enough to remember that."

Trisha scrubbed at her forehead, sticky from her tears of laughter. "I don't. I just remember the part when Uncle Al sat on you. And when you tripped over me and Will," she insisted stubbornly.

Ed winced. He remembered that too. "No one's ever going to let me live that down, are they?" he asked rhetorically.

Niko was the only one of his children to have been born in the house at Central rather than in Riesembul. It had been August, and the Elric brothers had been celebrating their return from the Gate six years earlier with family, friends and all the trimmings. Then, a full month early, Winry had gone into labor with Niko, and Ed had been in such a panic through the whole affair that Lana ordered him downstairs. Even then Al had had to pin him to the floor to keep him from rushing back up every time Winry yelled. To make things worse, when Al finally let him go he had started pacing and his offspring, wanting to reassure him and be reassured in their sweet, wonderful four- and five-year-old way, decided what their father needed was a hug. Unfortunately they decided this when he was in mid-stride, without prior warning, and before they had grown quite hip-high to him. The joint embrace effectively stopped his knees but the rest of him kept right on going, planting him chin-first in the floor and knocking the wind out of Trisha and Will as they landed next to him.

When all three sat up with identical looks of watery-eyed shock, his audience of family and friends had been torn. They couldn't laugh and cajole him then, because Trisha and William were crying and Edward looked supremely unhappy with the world in general and himself in particular. Things tended to explode when Ed was unhappy, so they compromised by patting the three all over, making sympathetic noises, and then ribbing Ed about it for years afterward.

"Can I tell some other story? One that makes me feel less guilty?" When he received no reply, Edward looked down—and smiled at what he saw. "I didn't think you'd last through another one," he murmured softly.

His daughter was curled with her feet in his lap and her damp, soap-smelling head buried in his real shoulder, her slack mouth and quiet purling breaths telling him she wasn't shamming.

He had held her like this when she was barely the length of his forearm. Barely nine years was all it had taken for that tiny, fragile, unbelievably _loud_ bundle to become this beautiful, brilliant child that filled his arms and his heart.

_So little time…_

"I will tell you one thing my darling, my baby girl," he whispered, too softly to disturb the skinny bundle of knees and elbows in his arms. "I will tell you that of all the things I've seen and done and been recognized for, you and your brothers are the first important thing I've managed not to screw up royally. I'll tell you that I love you all more than anything, and I'm terrified for you all more than anything, and how there is nothing the Gate could take in trade that would equal you."

Ed smiled wryly against his daughter's damp head and finished aloud: "And one day I might do something _really_ amazing and tell you when you're awake to hear it."

Trisha barely twitched as he lifted her and stood, yawning hugely. The third floor seemed a long way to climb once he got through the door, and the lounge and its pile of Pinako's throws too tempting to resist. With a flick of the master switch in the hall, the house followed the rest of Central into the street-lit peace of a spring night.

With a small face shoved trustingly into the crook of his arm, Edward Elric smiled to no one in particular and fell asleep.


End file.
